Roman numerals

Your way is what precedes you.
                                          — Claire Schwartz


After more than a week, the parcel mailed
comes back to us.  And in spring, the envelope
with manuscript pages arrives at its destination, 
but long months after the deadline has passed.

We go out for eggs, bread, green leafy vegetables. 
Flour, sugar, butter, milk. We count what we call 
our simple comforts, ask the checkout guy to double-
bag everything so the universe doesn't spill out 

of a tear in the brown paper. A cockroach flails 
where it has been cornered. Who knows how many 
more times we'll get to repeat the ordinary gestures 
that make up a story, a past? One, two, three, four, 

the teacher said, marking the blackboard 
with a piece of chalk. Then five, a diagonal 
slash across them—the way sheaves were once 
gathered like bundles of straw, like kindling.