A LOVE STORY - MUSINGS #85
A LOVE STORY
Sneaking out to smoke
among the tasseled corn, kissing
boys under the peach tree
that her father, gasping for air,
chopped down to spite her –
she came to love two
and could not choose between them.
If she secretly favored one,
she never said – only that it was
better to reject them both.
She never married.
Last year, knowing more
than she ever let on,
she came home to die.
We all have a ticket, she’d say –
date-stamped, no exchanges.
Lying there in the hospital bed,
she heard a voice – which one’s? –
not heard in fifty years.
Stepping out into the hallway,
oxygen tank in hand,
she called out his name.
In the month more she lasted,
she told no one
what had passed between them.
So like her
to keep it that way.