Our apartment still aromatic with the trout lily
I woke the morning after our anniversary
to learn he’d spent the night ill without me.I couldn’t help but blame our wedding cake,
its sugar & buttercream,
which I’d thawed from the freezer
& divided down the middle.The cake tasted nothing
like it had at our wedding, but he still cleaned
both plates & got food poisoning.Listen, when I talk about that cake, I am talking about
how in the months that followed, crows replaced
the barn swallows. How one day while jogging
I watched a hawk tear open a rabbit.Sometimes the old shame rises
& I am reminded of the years I went missingin a stranger’s body.
One night, a storm shook entire branches
from the oak across the street.
When he asked how it was possiblethe noise hadn’t woken me, I reminded him
what he himself had said. I sleep like the dead.
