It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
Grief wolfed me from the inside gnawed my spine and I could roll over and suffer or dig a pit and bait it flay the beast on my marriage bed I chose the shovel I chose the hunter’s knife to slit grief scrotum to throat and no I didn’t know I took a murderer as husband and please keep in mind married so long I’d acquired the habit of twoness two minds two crowns two pairs of eyes the worst word in any language alone and letting go I felt formal as a stone splitting and a brother-in- law’s suit was a solution to my un-halving yes frailty if frail is to bury my dead and seize fruit growing over the grave and if I had to do it again perhaps Polonius this time yes even in his fussy grandiloquence I tell you remarriage would’ve still been overhasty still a thorn to my son still this old heart’s cleaving
Dayna Patterson is a photographer, textile artist, and irreverent bardophile. She’s the author of O Lady, Speak Again (Signature Books, 2023), If Mother Braids a Waterfall (Signature Books, 2020), and Titania in Yellow (Porkbelly Press, 2019). Honors include the Association for Mormon Letters Poetry Award and the 2019 #DignityNotDetention Poetry Prize judged by Ilya Kaminsky. She’s the founding editor (now emerita) of Psaltery & Lyre and a co-editor of Dove Song: Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry.
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