Suicide's Widow Poem by jackilton peachum

SUICIDE'S WIDOW
(Wash.D.C.,1956)

The first question must always be— why?
What was it you wouldn't share with me,
your companion of long life?
And where did you go, through what door
did you step that took you to a dark abyss
where nightshade outbid the roses of so many years?

I will always remember the sound-
cold I was— yet it fried my bones,
left me speechless— hungering for a word—
any word that might bring you back to converse with me,
any word that might cancel this departure, this betrayal,
this sudden divorce.

What spectral hand guided you to hold the weapon so?
I will never know more, remaining in ignorance
— and I have come to hate you—
not for what you did but for the abruptness of it,
leaving behind the untried years,
the unfinished narrative, the sentences we never spoke.