WINTER WIDOW
Outside the window, she saw the naked trees of winter lit by a slivered crescent moon, casting thin shadows upon a frigid ground. Skeletons in the moonlight, dark ghosts, brittle like her bones. There was little flesh about her, a fresh widow, reduced by grief until resembling the fragile branches in the sullen night.
There was a time when she was juicy, ripe with swelling tissue, wet with moisture, velvet of skin. She lapped at life with full lips and embracing gestures. Speared on her husband’s cock, she moaned, screamed with laughter and pivoted in sheer joy. Her life had been full, overflowing, desirable, endless, a portrait of promise.
He died one day, and life turned surreal. So much was left to do, only the reason for living gone. The temperature of life had grown colder, like him under the soil.
Outside it started to snow, a gentle covering of branch, bush and ground, a tender benediction, a white blanket to her pain. She went and knelt in the garden, suddenly grateful to feel anything, even the cold.
She would live, but still he must be so cold under the snow.
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2008
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