Stephen Reilly
What a Widower Imagines
Three months, three days
The widower wakes in the chair once again.
Third time this week. No La-Z-Boy. This night,
another episodic flash, like lightning in summer,
they're rolling into the Purple Palm parking lot.
Newspapers suck up the juices of fresh blue crabs,
always the sweating pitcher of draught,
Freddie Fender wasting his days and nights
on the jukebox. She might not recall it his way –
he can't ask her. No. No need to wish it so.
Two nights ago, unearthed from a quarter century ago,
they're holding hands on Blind Pass Beach after
she twirled and twirled under the pallid moonlight.
(Kisses were all we needed that night,
learning the taste of each other, she wrote him.)
No more expectations. Black on black on black. Put
one day in front of another. Monotonous pursuits.
To the children, all is well. Everyone else, it sucks.
She felt happy, unexpectedly. Her avatar emoji danced
with butterflies, threw smoochy kisses from texts.
Her eyes nuptial one last time. But then, then . . .
Bitterly brutal that June. Miserable sunlight.
The widower cannot avert his eyes. He tries.
Grief will release its chokehold on his memories.
The widower knows this. But when? He thinks
he should have cared more then than now.
Platitudes poison. Salt drops into his wounds.
Three months, three days, the widower haunts
the house, the corners of their hollowed out home.
The hearth cold, as expected, predictable.
This day not the next, he must remind himself.
