I Found Her in a Rocking Chair

I found her waiting,
like a sagging doll placed
in a chair’s embrace
but ashen and crimsoned—
drying in the raisoning sun
in that long hour of dusk
with her heavy shadow
stretched wetly
like a great black yawn
tethered to her rocking chair.

She was an empty jar,
devoured complacently;
—fed into despair
but not decently, no
and without courtesy, no.
Without fanfare

she simply gave in-
to the longing
to leak out
under the pergola
near our garden daylilies.

She enjoyed being
there, amongst the spinning
pinwheels, waiting for me
to return home. I broke it

to her, the night
before she died.
I swaggered in, still
sweating syllables of prose
and confessing till she cried.

She wilted near the garden,
tilted in a rocking chair
with her eyes open.