Secret Widow

Your birthday

secretwidow — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:58:26 +0000

I know it’s sneaking up and for months it pulses in the background, but at the same time I mistakenly expect it will not touch me, that at most I will be safe in that near silent coherence we all have, we who love you, for one more year. But every year something happens.

There is the cool hard stone inside, that still and water-worn thing I am. And there is another me that didn’t ask for this. To have this matter arranged in the form of me. To suffer. The way you suffered in spite of your good fortune, your beauty, your youth.

I don’t wish you were here. So why does this happen?

Expatriotism

secretwidow — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:18:49 +0000

When I am home, I will be better. I’ll eat less, drink less. Make things. Laugh with friends and visit my grandmother. Plant a garden. Read, sew, knit. Get a cat. Hang my pictures and make tea. Paint. Breathe deeply… I won’t feel it any more, that suffocating pressure.

The ugly crunch in my belly will be gone. The sullen lines between my eyebrows will smooth out. I’ll stop touching my face. I will be where I belong at last.

But how will I ever, ever leave him?

You

secretwidow — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 21:48:13 +0000

I want you.

RenFaire Psychic

secretwidow — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 21:09:39 +0000

“You don’t know if you love this man.”

It wasn’t what I had expected to hear.

Home

secretwidow — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 02:10:57 +0000

It’s just that my heart breaks when I come home to him this way. Home is where I want to be.

Goodbye

secretwidow — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 01:01:17 +0000

I love him too much. Do you throw that away, for what? For the last awkward Red Rose tea Sunday with your grandmother, for your poor brother?

Those eyes and that cool pebble. The more I think about it.

Mondays

secretwidow — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:22:40 +0000

Whispering in the dark, the white sheets, his body warm but skin cool to the touch. An insolent rain flung against the window.

In the morning the sorrow drawn out, his hand, over my heart.

If he could just put me in his pocket and carry me around. If I could just stop keeping it together, let the fibers pull apart and fit in the space in between, feel only that, only him, he whose hand over my heart, drawing it out of me.

Like Touching Gold

secretwidow — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:52:44 +0000

Behind his eyes his heart, a shiny dark stone inches deep in cold, moving water.

Like touching gold, my mother said.

The smell of his hair like a deck of cards at the cottage.

“I don’t know how to make you happy,” he told me.

His hand on my forehead and I can feel it, the light I cannot quite let in. The wide chest and wide dark lashes.

Last night he said he often feels like I’m disappointed in him, the smell of his hair like a canvas tent in the sun.

The way he looks at me sometimes. Each breath of him like home, like laziness and calm, like the comfort I want to find.

First Snow

secretwidow — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 19:42:12 +0000

It’s winter and daytime barely wedges itself into the dark.

Not wanting to be like her, but sometimes I can’t make myself know better.

As time passes I seem less like the gift I wanted to be. The edges rub raw. It’s so easy to think, at first, that he will never have to know me.

Haunted

secretwidow — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 03:25:47 +0000

The route line that incidentally spells CN. Outside our hotel window, that train, the bridge, my old home. Had I thought of that?

The street is busier now, there are pretty girls in scarves and boots, leather jackets, bars. They haven’t torn the whole building down yet, the place we lived, but they are changing the road and there is more glass, new, taller buildings.

Was that you? Somnambulism is new to me. I left the room barefoot and only after the second door sucked shut did I wake up. There had been a weird indifference, a dead-easy pull.

There was a humbling exchange with the night staff. Like a CAMH patient I was escorted in the elevator. He answered the door in his underwear, I pushed myself in, past his confusion.

It was the morning of your birthday.