They told me in the hospital,
with white walls echoing like a tomb,
"Your wife is dead."
I stood there, hollow,
my ears ringing with the absurdity of it.
I wanted to go home,
sit at her feet,
and tell her what happened
so she could tell me what to do
because that is how life worked:
I carried my burdens,
and she untied them with her hands.
She was my wife, yes,
but more than that
she was my mother when I faltered,
my friend when the night grew too heavy,
the compass I leaned on
when the road split into shadows.
Without her,
the air has no map.
The rooms in our house
stare back at me like strangers.
The bed is an endless field of absence.
Oh God,
why is it that women
are not like her anymore?
Why must her kind vanish
the kind who pour themselves out
until the world is softer,
the kind who hold you steady
when you don’t even know
you’re falling?
If love was a language,
she was its first word
and its last silence.
And now I am left,
stammering,
trying to spell my life
without her name.