Husband, perhaps you are not author of that
“black dog”
that, so lugubriously leans in my chest, but
suspiciously
you are always around when that dog visits.
You roll up color to store away like used
Christmas wrap
until everything is gray. I hear you on the phone
guaranteeing our parties will fall on rainy
days, the few guests
turned away.
I know you are the one who threw out
my lucky rabbits foot, the one who made all my
favorite dresses
too small, who shattered our lovers’ pledges
like wedding china
hurled against the wall.
Let me tell you, you are no longer a man. You are disappointment.
You are the tenacious membrane to be wrest
from the pomegranate before one can savor the
fruit.
You are the inexplicable chill bone deep
underneath sun-burnt shoulders, the chill
leading to fevers and feverish nightmares.
You are every plan that went awry,
every diminished dream, every lonely night.
You are forced piano lessons, the consistent
switch to my psyche
and I am afraid that we may just outlast one
more winter.
The older we get the more this black dog growls
and snuffles my crotch. I am tired
of the impending emergencies of every day,
tired
of the nightmares I sweat out hemmed in your
embrace.
I am tired of the cigarette butts, the beer
bottles and pull-tabs clogging our drainpipes,
flooding the foundation, ruining lathe and
plaster,
the way everything we constructed
now lays ruined by our lack of foresight,
by our smug, youthful confidence in forever
after.
Let me tell you I have come to believe in
trephening love—
in letting the black butterflies
out of my heart—in putting that black dog
out the back door—in getting myself out.
I have come to believe in a quick death
even if it is a death not well thought out.
Too well I understand the grief of dying drawn
out for years.
I believe that forensics will eventually show
how it is that you killed us one small slight
at a time.
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