Until We Are Done
I lost my wife and partner to cancer in the autumn of last year. I’ve been living and writing on Cape Cod.
[Shopping alone on a rainy winter Sunday.]
Half the things in my cart I don’t eat.
But you do.
∞
See, they’re here for you.
I’ll take them home,
put them on the second pantry shelf.
Please don’t try to reach them without me.
∞
Food for the life that can no longer be
but cannot be done,
must not be done,
because I am not done
with you,
with us,
with me in you,
with the me I like more than any other me,
with the me I’m not remembering so well, just now.
∞
Selfish; I know you hurt.
But let me hurt for you,
and stay with me a while,
until we are done.
I’ll trade a broken heart for a broken back.
∞
There’s more to eat.
There are little goldfish.
Line them up on the table; eat them quickly, one by one, like pills.
Then throw me in; Jonah into the whale.
Wholly consumed, I’ll pray,
and God may change his mind.
∞
We are not done
until we are done!
Not exactly a prayer.
But I’ve made my point, right?
∞
Before,
I’d made a freezer full of everything you like.
The labels are fading.
We don’t have much time; it’s all starting to burn at the edges.
Almost too cold to touch.
∞
You missed the holiday.
There’s still brisket; it will survive both of us.
The rest, I’m not so sure.
∞
We eat to live, not live to eat.
Does it matter what we’re eating
if we’re eating it together?
We’ve never been into labels, you and me, anyway.
∞
Remember McDonalds
on the Champs Elysée
with a paper cup of wine?
∞
What about the 30 boxes of red Jell-O?
I hate Jell-O, especially hospital red.
I made your favorite Vampire Cake whenever you wanted it, poking holes in the hot white cake to let in the unctuous red.
The redder the better.
You lit up when you cut in.
The genius child on her fifth birthday,
a fork full of the only cake her mother could make.
∞
You said once it looked like the gauze
you pulled off your injection site wound.
Gross, babe.
But you loved it.
∞
The very last time,
I added red nasturtium blossoms to the plate,
a candle to class things up, on our best China.
I said, you can eat the flower.
You scrunched up your face;
Want cake! you said and put the flower in your hair behind your ear.
∞
All those cravings at the end:
Nathan’s hot dogs,
frozen onion rings,
ice cream.
∞
The kid at Capron Park on a Sunday afternoon;
ring curls,
holding on to grandma Ida’s hand.
Wet brown eyes looking at the monkeys;
Neatly licking a cone,
careful not to dribble
on your baby blue coat.
∞
Eating your way back to the beginning
when there was just you
and, still, we to look forward to.
∞
Before we were,
And before we were done.
