Your Husband was a City in a Country of Sorrow

by Didi Jackson

Your husband was a city in a country of sorrow.
You wanted a door,
you climbed a wall instead.
As some trees stay green all year,
others drop their leaves like clothes,
the sky sheds its light like a shirt,
stars fall like socks, a body heavy and jaundiced
will slide down a wall, naked, to one side or the other,
will stiffen slightly in that pose
until you find him, your eyes slipping
in the blood you never stepped in.
He was a seed in a tangle of grief.
He was lead in a river of silence.
He was a voice in the song of stillness.
He was a finger in the fist of failure.