I know the wind
cries for me.
The birds sing of
my loneliness from
the sky.
I don't even see
you in my dreams
anymore.
Your red dress
hangs from the mahogany
coat rack, and the
storm clouds in my mind
never go away.
Baby, these miles
and miles are making
me soul sick, and this
trumpet will be the
death of me yet.

i wonder
how we managed
to convince our hands
not to hold onto each other
when we said goodbye.

now, i'm writing
inside this flying can;
thinking this might be the closest
to a home.

these small seats,
with even smaller legs space.
these funny-shaped windows,
where all you can see are
white clouds,
and sporadically
some lights.
tiny houses,
with even tinier people.

and us,
tiny giants,
reading overpriced perfume catalogs,
listening to mispronounced english,
using disposable low-fidelity headphones,
inside low-light low-love low-cost
low-everything
airplanes.

So you're happy now
with another man
at home with our son
I will always be his dad
you told me
and I thank you

Just so you know
I never stopped loving you
I never stopped being ****
but I never stopped loving you
when your skin is liquid
and your teeth rattle in your skull
I will still love you

When the earthworms
use your eye sockets as tunnels
and when all men have either forgotten
or are too scared to speak your name
I will still love you
you deserve to be happy
and you are right to move on
if you feel as though your dreams with me
are truly dead and gone
just know that I still love you
love the father of your son

My (ex) mother in law says
She loves me,
she won’t say any more but
worries I’ll miss her boy
one day in the future.
I was his pride and joy.

My mother says
maybe the women of the past
tried harder.
Is there anything to rescue,
women must try harder than men.

I haven’t worried about missing him;
until now.
The relief has felt so liberating.
Relief from that pressure
to carry it all, do it all,
with a smile, without love.
A smile, a gesture, care my way
would have been fuel for a year,
but the silence felt suffocating.

I’d rather love myself
than smile and pretend that I’m loved
by the husband in my bed.
For our kids, for me, I’m better alone.

Now, though,
that worm in my ear.
Will I regret this more next year?
More than the grief of this family broken?

I cannot see that I will.
Joy is breaking through;
but —
What do I do with this worm?

The mourning is
about it never being
the way I needed
it to be.

My life itself a
disturbance of mourning

Stands in my life. Before me. The
dead girl under the bed
her skin transparent as mine

disappears. I come out
and there is no mother. Sometimes
she appears and there is no telling what
attracts her warmth. Approaches and departs.
Becomes desire,
the loot of her mourning.

Empty womb pillow. I am not
enrapt. Its’ tufts flap my fringe.
Behind me, at my sides
stands mourning.

I have only to be busy with your burial.
Sharpening flint to a pillar
pile to a mound
and turn from it.

It is gone
forever.
And I am.

By Noa Vardi, M. D.