One Poem by Jessica Weyer Bentley

 

A Widow’s Daybreak

 

I can see the gymnasts on the lawn at the break of day.

The pink elephant of fate.

That ever enveloping blackness as the shade of life creeps down.

The moments begin to outweigh the sum.

The secondhand drums-the trumpets call.

Summer’s last crimson sunset fades to watercolour.

The thrusts of the aorta are tallied.

Failings are weighed with peddlers’ iron.

His warm hands-

his slow breaths in slumber,

are totalled as if Mickey Mantle himself

signed his thorax.

My grip on the concrete world has turned to sand.

Oh! To stretch the grains,

melting the molecules of glass.

Alas, I awake with a strand of my hair over one hazel eye,

bracing myself for the inescapable horror to set in.

Imploring for the mundane from the day before,

I swing my bare feet to the cold opaque floor,

yearning for his familiar stirring in our marital bed.

Jessica Weyer Bentley is an Author/Poet. Her first collection of poetry, Crimson Sunshine, was published in May 2020 by AlyBlue Media. She has contributed work to several publications for the Award-Winning Book Series, Grief Diaries, including Poetry and Prose, and Hit by a Drunk Driver. Jessica’s work has been anthologized in Women Speak Vol. 6 (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), Summer Gallery of Shoes (Highland Park Poetry), Common Threads 2020 Edition (Ohio Poetry Association), Appalachian Witness Volume 24 (Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel) and Made and Dream (Of Rust and Glass), 2021and online blogs including Global Poemic and Fevers of the Mind and countless other anthologies, magazines, and journals. She is currently penning her second collection of poetry, Down Below Where the Canary Sings, slated for publication in Spring 2023. Jessica currently resides in Northwest Ohio.