three years,
three months,
a lifetime measured
in the terrible arithmetic of
women who believe that resurrection
is only running late
but you are no Jesus,
and there is no angel in white linen,
no trumpet splitting the firmament
no final revelation
explaining
why love was permitted
to ache
in such cruelty
I had to grieve the fact that I wanted a different ending
and that there would be
endless mornings,
reaching toward the coldest of sheets
and that some days,
would be haunted by the unwritten years,
the house uninhabited,
the children never sleeping between us,
our worn hands– never finding one another beneath a hospital blanket
let me bury the prophecy too
and take with my silence,
some apocryphal image of you–
palms unpierced and
untouched by some life that has yet to destroy us
and when I finish mourning the ending that
I begged God to just give us
I will turn from the altar,
with nothing left to say
and I will close the book