Issue 6:
Love
Carol Church
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Relations
For her second wedding, to an older man,
I send my ex-aunt-by-marriage a coffee carafe
and two mugs.
No one goes to the ceremony;
so awkward, and anyway all the way out in Ohio.
A month later, she writes back to thank me,
to tell me how thoughtful I am.
Her angular writing leaves grooves
on the thick yellow paper. Does she know
that all I remember of her
is the eggplant she served me when I was six,
the left-wing clippings crowding her fridge
the one time we visited, after Jim left
with the Spanish professor?
No one was sure how to tell her how sorry they were.
stopped loving him. But she couldn't see that.
She was gone, and the children already in college.
She slipped
through our hands like water gone by.
And now it's too late
for the missed Christmases, the birthday phone calls,
the games of Monopoly that never got played.
All I can wish her
is leisurely breakfasts, the steam of fresh coffee.
All I can hope: that the second groom's elderly heart
outlasts my family's traitorous first.
~Carol Church
Carol is a freelance writer, editor and researcher who also self-publishes a feminist zine. She lives in Gainesville, FL. Email.
© 2001 by Carol Church. All Rights Reserved.
© 2000-2002 by Cayuse Press. All Rights Reserved.
This page updated April 24, 2002.