Frailty

Darkness sometimes shudders
on the broken edges of my loneliness,
beaten back by you, by us,
from the empty shoreline of the island
that I used to be, never farther than
the next time I am gone from you.

In our garden hot in beating August sun,
hands in black soil, Daylilies and Black-eyed Susans,
Purple Coneflowers all seeding,
I sometimes taste metallic bleakness
of the nightmare that would be
life bereft of you,
and in that sudden perception of emptiness
I simply stop, lost long enough
to feel my ending.

When I am at work, bright offices all empty
as I wait alone for one more battlefield
of things gone wrong
in busy warehouse systems,
the realization hits
that without you none of this
would mean anything at all,
that I would walk away from everything
if you were gone.

And on those nights when you take our kids
on overnight visits to your father’s house
and I am left alone,
the spaces of our silent home
don’t echo with any memory
of you and our children,
and I wander restless through
long lonely night and empty rooms,
sleepless in the frailty of loneliness
I never felt before your life
became my own.