Was she wrong to mourn so long
before he died, rose up one day then
fell away beyond her memory’s
fragile song?

To hold tight to promises
that won’t come true, to polish
them to shiny glass in her
sweaty childish grasp, turning them

like marbles, cold and round,
threaded through with watery brown 
and ochre, red and blue,
stuttering out their hollow sound?

To hide in cobwebbed crevices,
to lie in myriad and haphazard ways
so as not to stay,
and yet not to forget?

This is, perhaps, her eulogy, her elegy,
her last attempt
at blood and breath,
at history and forgotten flesh.

She will not beg forgiveness, 
though he may say she lies.
But she is scared that when she dies
they’ll meet again—he’ll wipe away

his sins with one cool hand
then proffer it outstretched.
She would cry for them,
but there is nothing left.