EMPTY BEDS

 

I still wish I could fall asleep to

the sound of your voice, its

flannel and feather

down the inner skin of my arm.

 

In a dream I try to call you. It’s an

emergency, my fingers in the holes of the old

clockwise rotary, the only way to our future—

but the dial is stuck.

 

Where have you gone? Your silence

is a code I cannot decipher, like an obituary

where the death is unexpected

but not explained.

 

I need to tell you about the

bewildering, even beautiful

bone-on-boneness of my life

how every step without you

reminds me of widowhood.

 

My joints know our story. We

sprinted through years with flawed form,

pounding, ignoring the pain, towards

our separate finish lines

not realizing it wasn’t a race

 

like my immigrant grandparents

who fought and seethed and slept

in separate rooms but when she died without

a word, he wailed

and asked why

he couldn’t have been the first to go.