In waiting I learn to live with the anticipations of loss—

The answer I seek is one I do not truly wish to know:

I grieve you as a lover grieves, lingering.

It is your final giftto me: this roomwhere I shall bleed and knit,as spinsters do.

I am not in pain, I am in sadness.

And the dead stay dead. Like me, wiseto nothing tangible, not body, neither blood.

Perhaps, but I have eaten bitter decades upalready, just to choke on what issomething more divine than grief,having swallowed the glories such suffering brings.

I have tried you in the furnace of affection.

The heart, whichisn't immune to anything, turns numb to allothers, dumb as the muscle that it is,