Wednesday Words: 1.6.16

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To Her Absent Husband

I try to love you with light hands,
fingers cupped enough to hold you,
yet open, so you won’t mistake them for a cage,
but no matter how I curl them, too often
they are empty and you are gone again.
You seem to me then like a suit on a hanger,
or a car idling at a curb, no driver in the front seat.
I walk into love’s closet and bury my face in the suit’s jacket, inhaling
your scent, but the empty sleeves hang slack above my hips.
In the car, I rest my cheek against the cold window,
the chorus of a song you once gave me playing
in my head, wondering if you still listen to that music.

When I am away from you, my wonderings bloom
like weeds in the field of space between us, and then our marriage is a kite
I am running with to hold aloft.

I am tired of running, of looking backwards to see
if the kite is still there, bobbing in our infinite sky.
I need to let go of the string.
It is a beautiful kite, and I love it.
I love it.
But I don’t want a kite.
I want, perhaps, a glass of water.
A letter to read by the bank of a river, or in front of a fire.
A pair of warm socks.
I want something I can put on, hold close, drink from.
There are many things I might be for you,
would be for you, forever:
a sheer curtain, the limb of an oak, a painting
on the wall of a favorite room.
I do not want to be a shovel or a boot.
I do not want to be a cracked teacup, a scratched record,
a shutter banging against the house on a cold night.
I will not be the dog who whines outside your closed door.

Poem is mine. Photo is from: ** RCB ** via Compfight cc

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13 thoughts on “Wednesday Words: 1.6.16

  1. Kathy says:

    “I want, perhaps, a glass of water.
    A letter to read by the bank of a river, or in front of a fire.
    A pair of warm socks.
    I want something I can put on, hold close, drink from.”

    I like this bit. I like the whole poem, but this part stood out to me. Such simple wants, but when absent, so missed.

  2. Marian says:

    Such a moving poem, Rita. When you wrote it, were you thinking of literal absences or figurative ones? I ask because I have felt both kinds, in my marriage, and they come with quite different feelings and challenges. (And the worst is when the two are combined…)

    I love the imagery in the things you would be: a sheer curtain, the limb of an oak, a painting
    on the wall of a favorite room. And I feel the truth of “wonderings bloom[ing] like weeds”. And I also, like Kathy, think the wants were so simple; not at all too much to ask of a marriage.
    Marian recently posted…Sock-cess!My Profile

    • Rita says:

      I wrote this many years ago, about a husband who was emotionally absent. The original title was “The Addict’s Wife.” Now, Cane and I are struggling with living apart 50% of the time. It is much harder than I thought it would be, and it made me think of this poem. When I pulled it out to read it again, I was struck by how much of it feels true of this different kind of absence. I did change a line or two, so that it could encompass a wider range of absences, and then changed the title so it would do the same.

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