Things I must tell you after seeing your picture in the news:
that your face, though older, is still the placeholder
for exquisite blue kindness; that I could always rely on your
moral view – important back then when I was beginning
to parse the world;
that your ambition for so much outside us
frightened me into bad decisions,
decisions I have regretted
although after all these years, how ridiculous
to begrudge Baked Alaskas
and a German cookbook merely because
they swallowed your time?
that I am deeply sorry
about the geologist who was not
earthier than you,
only lonelier;
that I think of our child
more than I should and believe
I have paid for these and other
less original sins
to a ghostly joint account, a credit
you may see if you can locate this statement
although something feels unsettled (still);
that I have not boned a duck
for a galantine since that day
we fought about it in our kitchen;
that while we were not too young to marry (statistically),
we spoke through tin cans tied with string,
like children, hearing only our own voices.
Cecille Marcato‘s work appears or is upcoming in The Westchester Review, Leon Literary Review, Solstice, Slipstream, SWWIM Every Day, and elsewhere and has recently been nominated for Best of the Net. She holds degrees in literature and design and graduated from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Currently living in Austin, she draws cartoons and coaches kids and adults with their writing.