WOMAN OVERHEARD AT THE GRAVE OF HER HUSBAND

I still grieve for you, my love.
They said time would heal
and I'd forget.
They didn't know.
No one knew except you and me.

The kids are fine.
Having them helps sometimes, I think.
Then again, I don't know.
Maybe they're the link that
keeps you alive for me.
Or dead.
Sometimes I think it was always
just you and me.

Yesterday I wrote a poem.
I remembered what you said,
that someday I'd be famous.
You believed in me, you were sincere.
Maybe that is why I grieve.
I'm still stumbling in the dark.
No one's here to steady me
except with do's and don'ts.
I yearn for your shoulder.

The black, endless night wraps its arms
around me in a cold embrace,
and I'm a starving beggar
pleading for a morsel,
empty, needing sustenance,
but finding none.

If I went storming
through this granite-studded necropolis
with the ferocity
of a wildly-raging tornado,
leveling monuments, pulverizing flowers,
uprooting trees,
wailing my dirge like a siren's call,
would you hear?
Would you see?

Oh, my love,
my heart and my soul,
would you come back?

~Copyright © 1994 Ruth Gillis~

First published in the Spring/Summer 1994 issue of Mobius