The Young Widower


Words never seem to fit around
my love. Baggy, a trashy overcoat draping
narrow shoulders, or too tight, straining love,
twisting it to shapes sharper than a blow
across the face.

No one understands
the other women. Think me over her,
back on the hunt. They can’t see the end of
shuffled hours lost in swift-moving hands,
the evening creeping from the room, leaving
an empty winter morning sprawled across
the bed.

Our child is crying.
I cry too, inside, a city lost to never-ending
flame. I keep this to myself. I am a man.

Children do not forgive. Would not
if I filled the promised rooms of our home with
another woman. What would they think?
That I did not love her anyway?
That I want them to lose the thread of
Memory, forget her voice’s buttermilk
cooing them to sleep?

The youngest cries. Soon
she will wake her sister, begin a duet of tears.
I go to rock her in my too hard arms,
her small face a miniature of her mother’s. Calm her
with the beating of my tattered heart, the soft hush
of rain inside my chest. Reassure her with a silence
truer than mere words.