HER LAST DAY
No need to wait till Sunday for a drive
that's sure to win Speed Limit of the Year --
thing is, I have to bring the wife along.
On calm days, she gets staggery and carsick.
How's she gonna hold up in this breeze?
It's her idea, coming out this way:
"I want it seen, the way you're treating me --
how scared they get when I can't keep my feet,
the children I can't keep beyond a blink."
"So where's to go?"
"The courthouse, all the stores
downtown, the college squares, the rail depot.
I'll die by lunchtime, but on every lip
of everybody in this town."
Since when
was this my fault? She can't be in worse shape
than when we married, not six months ago.
I can't begrudge the poor girl her own body;
I'm no doctor. Still, how can I be
to blame for her reactions to just -- life?
I married her -- she wasn't my design.
It wasn't noon when we set out for town,
but only half a minute when she lurched
and tried to shout, but didn't make much sense,
of coming all to pieces. I, of course,
saw nothing but the road. If she had moved,
I didn't feel a tremor till halfway.
For all the strength she said she didn't have,
her door flew open under its own weight,
and she called out to me and everyone:
"There's nothing more for me to take -- it's it.
I'll drown myself before I live one day
with battering and stumbling. Let him tell
how I was there, and suddenly I left,
but let ten years roll by, and he'll forget.
He'll have a wife to stand up to all this.
She'll fall apart from turning old -- not me.
Spectacular -- that's how I'll leave you, bud,
and when I go, the dog goes with me too."
She wound up right on everything.
What stings
is, couldn't she have left the dog with me?