The Widow I Know
wears long sleeves and sleeps
downstairs with the laundry,
stalls on the narrow
road near the hollow tree,
watches whitecaps
slap together from her window,
makes a cross on her body,
this fossil of a woman
sets and dries into the wall
like a clay eye, lid fallen.
Grandma, I ask, did you even
love him? Does it even
matter, she says,
slow as a cathedral echo.