Solitude

She used to greet the day with song,

a radiant spirit cheering up the block,

sparking a swirling incandescent glow

like the Northern Lights at night.

Clinging to her plush pillow remembering

lush thighs with a deadened vacant groin,

a hint of her presence is in a scent

between the sheets. I’ll stay in bed forever.

I’ve never lived alone. It’s eerily silent,

a nudity of unfurled stillness.

After I put my wife to rest, glaucoma

has left me almost blind.

My parchment-covered cold hands

grope for meds, listening for the jounce

of pills, feeling their size and shape.

This day will never end.

Searing pain pierces the marrow

of my bones. Abandoned as a scared

child waiting at a lost and found.

Who will take me home?

I glumly stare out the window barely

seeing pin-points of light, tiny drops

of rain glisten in the gray of morning

mist on the bare limbs of a mulberry tree,

tender swelling buds about to bloom.