I’ve seen life take
a librarian,
a beautiful woman,
intuition like no other.
Cancer, they said.
My friend really loved her.
She was the first
to notice he was gay,
and she accepted him.
So we climbed into his
Toyota Tercel,
winding down curves,
up the mountain,
toward the funeral home.
People sat in rows of nine,
a special couch reserved
beside the casket.
The dead have always
bothered me,
like a one sided conversation,
like the air in my lungs
was a debt I owed.
So I sat in the back,
people watching as I do,
a wallflower,
star jasmine pressing
against the concrete.
Close to the exit,
in case discomfort
asked me to leave.
Then her husband walked in,
a man I’d never seen,
only heard in stories.
He went straight to her,
pressed his hands
against her face,
like he was
trying to hold on.
He cried.
His voice tore
the room apart.
Collapsed to his knees,
hands trembling with rage,
words ripping from his throat,
sharp, jagged, impossible
to take back.
Not a prayer.
Not a conversation.
It was a howl
that made the
walls bend,
love dressed in grief,
so fierce
it seemed to claw
at the air itself.
A good lover
she must have been.
And I understood:
maybe no one listens,
but the silence
always knows
what to say.