The Widow

 

It just kept going on

Hour, minute, second

Slowly, going on

Life became just as waiting in the anteroom

Sitting in her chair

Empty hands that grasped air

Awareness that when they had slept so many nights

Together, he had become her

Skin

She his

And now she was

Flayed

 

How hard that final reality was, obdurate

Bloating, bursting, rotting

Felt it all in her own body

As if it were she in the ground

 

She buried herself with a spade

Nearly too weak to drag him to the ditch

The tears swimming, bathing her whole body in sweat

Salty water. Black waves of dreams. Tossing and moaning,

Until the bursting up, up, up and the frozen air.

 

She took the bucket, rusty on the handle, dented.

Put the maroon wool shawl over her shoulder and began to

Walk to the river. He used to do it.

How he liked the river—“So clean, and wherever I go, I

Long for the river.”

 

Up a hill, and it hurt her old bones

Up and she stood there, saw the sliver of moon and silver

Water of the stars.

Just for a moment, saw beauty.

Saw thing as they were without her.

“Thank you.”

 

Down, dipping the bucket, the icy water over veined hands.

Off her shoes and stockings, her small feet dangling.

Piercing cold. Why she did it? Strange.

Debated to walk lightly on the slippery moss stones.

No. Another time.

 

 

Her stockings pulled on damp, shoes left untied.

Slowly back.

The heavy bucket tilted her to one side.

 

Like a hunchback, the thin, black silhouette on the hill.