Maria Alvarez (Scenes From An Undistinguished Life) Poem by Louis Kasatkin

Maria Alvarez embroidered her
life with meticulous detail,
consistent in her affectations
she accumulated the outward
appearance of savoir-faire;
her aspirations, unfulfilled
and unfulfillable, lent their
careless trajectory to her life;
whenever vicissitudes threatened,
a laconic smile and something
of hubris at the corner of the mouth
would susutain her amid the disillusionment;
such was the order of her life
until the careless trajectory
of a point three-two bullet
bisected her spouse's slumbering frame,
setting her free from the borrowed melancholy
in which she had sought refuge
from joy, uncertainty and herself.