Before my brain could begin
to process it — you, falling to the airport
floor, pulse fluttering in your neck
until someone rolled you onto your back,
and the fluttering stopped —

It was as if you cleaned up before you left
which, considering that you had to clear
out a whole lifetime, you can consider
a miracle

One person was brave enough to say it after my husband died: “You weren’t living with him. Why are you still so upset?”

after steven died, you would show up
on occasional friday nights
for my creative writing class

He always said the years
after the meltdown — when blood vessels
inside his skull exploded —
were a bonus, that if evolution
really worked, he’d have been dead
by now.