song of her divorce, The

Last year she dreamed of suffocating,

of being squeezed from her skin.

She prayed hard for reprieve,

kept her willful eye fixed on the ground,

let her dreamy one rove past anyone

urging caution, listened.

The song of spring breeze

and crying birds stirred

parts of her she thought dead.

She knew this day would shudder

in the movement of time

and suddenly cease to exist.

Yes, it had been a long, long way to silence.

She waits, listening for the moment

when the song pierces time.

She knows all the artistry of nature

can't make the finish beautiful.

It is not a time of beauty

or grief for the lack of it.

It is a time to cut to the quick,

a time to win or lose,

a time to play the ugly game,

she laughs, lifting her hands to the sky,

"May the shrewdest of us win."

II

They walked slowly down the dust carpet

under gray clouds, diminishing.

Tempted to forego the blood and tears,

to admit they were just two, tired

dusty shells of people leering at each other.

While the lazy part of her dreamed of forgetting,

of falling asleep, the other part was jolted

by a sudden clasp of hands: his on her wrists,

hers on his throat, squeezing him from his skin.

He may be suffocating, she thought,

but he will go on.

He walked away still coughing,

in the dust of his own footfalls.

She moved her eyes from his back to the sky,

waited for the sound of his coughs to fade,

listened to the song of breeze and birds,

heard the strengthening rhythm of her heart.

Copyright Frontiers Publishing, Inc. 1995
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