by Karen L. Newman

You dare mock me
with an I-told-you-so smile
as mascara enshrouds my face.

Yet beneath your Sunday best
slit wrists belie the grin,
the only antidote for the cancer.

Your physician gave us months together.
Time I inhaled. Time you choked out.
But we were always opposites –

my female to your male
my optimism to your pessimism
my vertical to your horizontal.

Our love was an amulet that failed us,
its magic unable to overcome
the fear of change.

I stand by you now
in death as I would have in life,
watching a parade of friends,

their eyes focusing on the cropped carpet.
They pretend to care.
Where were they when you were sick?

My eulogy is a nightmare
of garbled words and broken promises.
I pinch myself and don’t wake up.

Instead I’m dead like you,
feeling nothing. Not even when
the casket closes on our love.

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