Thursday, July 27, 2017

Recycling

What can you learn from my recycling bin?
The crushed cans of flavored seltzer, 
an empty cardboard box that held Vervain eau du toilette,
an occasional bottle of vodka, lots of Gatorade and yogurt containers,
Saturday and Sunday newspapers, still folded and unread.

Can you tell that my heart has been ripped from my body along with half of my memories?
Can you tell that all I see before me is an ocean of loneliness with no land in sight? 

My husband is dead.
The memory of all he was swirls around me.
It lives in the spices in my cabinets,
In the plates and cups,
In the teapots on their shelf
In the library books and the wood that holds them.
The wood he cut and planed and stained.
In the half empty bed, one side never unmade
Like Tally's sandcastle in the Ray Bradbury story. 
But my husband is not caught in the weeds of a summer lake.
He is gone. 
His ashes sit in an urn on my work table waiting to be incorporated into stones that we will wear around our necks/
A stone to grasp.
A stone to fondle.
A stone to be warmed by our living bodies that have no choice but to go on without him. 

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