Poem 3

I tried to make this as unsentimental as possible, but seeing as how I am a sentimental bastard at heart, it gets a little bit that way toward the end in the "coda". I hope it's clear enough why I tacked that part on.
There are a lot of conjunctions in this poem.

When someone is here
she lays out her own proof,
evidence. For example-
everyone a set of examples-
hands, white hair on knuckles,
and a back turned up on a bed,
and eyelashes in sun
and used Kleenex
and a pot in the sink soaking
and the crease behind an ear.

But, when she leaves
things step through curtains of symbol-
guesses and hopes.
Warm moisture becomes
buzzing signal on copper
and consonants on paper
and a picture under the shirts
of a bottom drawer,
a ghost of a phone number
remembered in a bar
when a song plays.

In the big war
ladies sent letters
-epistolary caresses-
dashed with their perfume.
Molecules slipped through
supply lines, cheating distance
in tiny floral ways.