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When she said she was leaving him
I couldn’t guess why—
just listened and watched her push eggs
‘round her plate, heard the clanging of kitchen staff
and some other sound—
a hum of fear—am I making it up now?
When she said,
this wasn’t supposed to happen to me,
a tray crashed—I heard someone laugh
(at my own failed marriage?)
I didn’t understand
what she was saying – as though seeing only
the fur of wild things, the feathers of hawks.
It wasn’t supposed to happen to me—
I heard a glass smash, imagined a chuppah
falling. I saw the white pillars of her porch
the perfect rows of roses
neighbors shaking their heads—
I heard book club gossip.
And now that she’s gone?
What of those nameless insects
who make themselves so well known at night
pulsing like blood through silence, pulsing
like a tune I can’t get out of my head, pulsing,
Get it? Get it?
Copyright 2021 Joy Gaines-Friedler
Joy Gaines-Friedler is a photographer and poet who lives in Michigan. Her books include Capture Theory (Aldrich Press, 2018).
Joy Gaines-Friedler
I love the restraint here. I too have listened without getting it.
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Yes, the restraint makes the realization of what’s going on even more powerful.
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Took me back immediately to my first marriage—a brilliant physicist who loved traveling as much as I did, but also a violent alcoholic. It wasn’t supposed to happen to me.
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Oh my god, Barbara. I’m so sorry you went through this.
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