Mornings
for ed and ann
After breakfast we used to get our coffee
and go out and sit on the porch together.
Just talk. Get into the day.
They gave me a name for it: anticipatory
grief. For years he hardly swallowed but
we could go out. He drank dark foamy
beer while I dipped my spoon, put food
in my mouth. Sometimes I couldn’t eat.
And then it was only the tube.
His voice got rough, a whisper only I knew,
interpreting for everyone, watching his face.
Then not that.
I’ve been alone for a year now. The light
spreads over the city, disappears all at once.
How quickly it changed, and his voice:
“Ann! Ann! Where did I put my glasses?”
How we sat in the mornings, with coffee.
How he made me laugh.
He died at 5:17 in the morning.
I still wake up just right after five
and look at the photos of him.
It’s April. You think and think about
what you could have said, what you could
have done, what you could have asked.
I have thought and thought about this, then
I said, if he’s truly completely dead, in his
ashes, in the ground, it doesn’t matter.
But if some of Eddie’s spirit is still alive,
still floating about somewhere, well, then,
he’d forgive me.
Sandra Dorr
(from This Body of Light, forthcoming, Hope West Press)
