April Salzano

I have left my ex husband again
in the ravine behind our house.
He waits in dreamscape, buried in metaphor and cliché,
a recipe made of the fragments
of days’ events, repressed memories, actual happenings
translated into something else, something only as symbolic
as my mind will allow in its fatigue. Dream extras
tell me he is dead, had I left a light on, he would have
found his way back home. It was too cold, and you were
too cruel…or was it the reverse? He didn’t make it,
you shut him out. I grieve. I weep openly, unabashedly.
Pieces start to fall together before coming apart. I am
lost in my guilt. He died broken and alone, I think.
Reality invades like spoken words. Beneficiary, funeral,
income tax refund, child support. Had I left the light on,
but instead I wasted him. His neck was broken, something
from a tv show I must have watched before bed.
And it was the dog I had left outside, licking gravy
from the dirt. The glow from the moon or the porch light,
synapses firing, the will to survive
would have brought her home, guided her in.
But not him. He would
lay in the ravine until I hoisted him onto my back,
dragged him up through the snow. He would have drained me
in order to live, pulled me back under.
When I wake, I am covered. I am warm,
but I am crying just like there is no tomorrow.