Not easy, spending my life
in this one house,
my nights at this window.
Not easy, those first ten years
saying no,
turning down dances,
husbands,
till eventually I said yes
to avoid the innuendos,
and take up what might be termed
my life.
It’s not Peter I pine for,
though he’s why I wait,
constant as a captain’s wife
always turning to the sea.
No, Peter, not you per se.
Eternal youth?
Who’d go back to pimples
and adolescent rage,
longings you can’t quite name?
Peter, you once boasted you were
betwixt and between,
suggesting you evaded
the traps of mortaldom,
as if you were as fleet
as your flighty shadow.
But you’re just stuck.
Maybe that’s why
you always garbed yourself in death—
cobwebs and skeletal leaves
the autumn trees discarded
instead of fresh green vines.
Meanwhile I rushed forward,
girl, belle, betrothed, bride,
wife, mother, grandmama.
I rush still.
So many beings I became,
none of them enough.
Why, then?
It’s that this world corsets me,
freights me with gravity,
a law no rebel can circumvent.
Widowed and gray but with a soul
light as starshine and fairy dust,
I wait at this window,
fearing you’ll never bring me back,
that all I’ll ever know is
Never.
© 2019 Sandi Leibowitz
