Liz had hers on a Wednesday afternoon
in her car. She tells me about it over lunch;
a backseat full of groceries and halfway home,
she felt something breaking inside her,
so she drove to the lake and sat very still, waiting.

Then it happened, she says, I broke right open.
I wept, then sobbed, then wailed. There was no bottom.

She says she may have even fallen asleep, she doesn't know;
she does know that she eventually stopped crying,
that inside she felt like the fields must feel after a hard rain.

Here, she says, moving her hand to her chest, I just felt brand new again.
I'm a better wife now, she says, a better person.

Good, Liz, good, I say.

I don't tell her about that morning in the shower,
when the water warmed me but could not console me,
or how I'm no better for it.