It was a Tuesday, like the last,
or the thousands of Tuesdays before it
when you'd say, "What's up, Buttercup?"
as I groggily slumped to the breakfast table.
I watched them wrap you up,
seal you in a bag for posterity,
I threw dirt on a box that Saturday
and folded your laundry that evening.
I've spent years waiting, weaving
your stories, your life, into a sweater
that warms my mornings and insinuates
I'll get a postcard or a phone call any day.
You could be anywhere, I spoke to you
in a prayer of thoughtful delusion,
You'll be back soon, and casually look up
from our table, saying to me, "What's up, Buttercup?"
There's a reason they didn't ask
Eurydice to weed her way through
Hades to find her past life, her living love.
It's so easy to trust in shadows here.
But, ten years was too long to wait.
I returned to where your box is hidden,
yet, the garden of tombstones is overrun
with the frozen, leering dead who cannot tell
me where you are, or where you were.
Charon has abandoned his oars and
left pamphlets and maps in his boat,
all gloss and tiny print over identical blocks
shifting silently on their lumpy grid.
Was your name east or west?
How do you read this damn thing?
Why won't you get off your back and
wave to me? Why would you leave me in
this hell of sweaters and empty chairs?
Of people don't seem to realize I'm no
widow, a but gold flower wilting in the sun.
Day after day, I climb back in the boat
and scan the other faceless names on
countless slabs of rock protruding from earth
and browning grass. Ghosts taunt me and
scratch your name into their foreheads,
willing to claim anyone for company in
this abandoned cemetery. They remember Concord,
our neighbors, our son, and they reach out to pull me into
the sea of emptied chest cavities and eyeless skulls.
I'm weary of rowing, tired of this hide and
seek you've been playing with me. My grip
on the oars is loosening, burning holes in my hands.
I'm a little sleepy just now; it's been days of looking.
Hades has no deals to make with my song-less soul.
Tomorrow, or the next day, I'll follow
the creeping buttercups through the graves...
for A,
and her
wandering Eurydice
and her
wandering Eurydice
