The tea and scones not really appealing today,
She droops in her slip, her arm on the patterned arm
Of an old chair her vanished husband left behind.
Her volume of love poems is open to Millay;
What my lips have kissed has unnecessary charm.
The words are vague, as if not written, but signed,
Silent gestures of fingers churning the air,
When what she needs are his fingers clutching her hair.
She has sat like this for days, playing the statue,
Silencing time, since the night he didn't come home,
Leaving a note of four short words, the last one "you."
She found it in the bathroom under his black comb.
She clears the table, puts the dishes in the sink,
And spends the rest of the day failing not to think.
