poetry about widowhood

Rote


I couldn’t give my life away.

It has slid once again into a pattern so utterly predictable that I can tell what time it is simply by what I happen to be doing at even given moment.

Even the few glimmers that might have been bright spots early on are fading for me. Just more responsibility and expectations.

Where is the fun?

Where is the desire?

Where is the intellectual stimulation and exchange?

Where is the variety, the break with grind?

I cast my net wide into the roiling waters of my new life and still mostly bring up old tires and algae.

I am not happy.

Forgotten


There are no answers

Except the ones already here

Rain drapes them like a haphazard cloak

Packed away with the winter woolens and forgotten like Mama’s ring and the China doll from before the war

Somewhere between the peonies and the irises, they bloom unseen

Lost like tomorrow’s yesterday

Dots in my history where stories should have taken root and grown.

Abandoned


As soon as the last leaf, bitter with summer’s death somersaulted away

He decided to leave

Because he didn’t feel he had a choice any longer

He came in knowing, started with goodbye

Then left before the first tear dropped.