My Husband Comes Back From The Dead

                                                 Right away you should know that I lie. He's still in the ground, but I imagine his hand on the back of my neck. I need to remember the way love rained down on me. Maybe I should have bought an urn for him to be buried in. Maybe I should have tried to tune his guitar before I gave it away. If I envision him here, perched in his corner of the couch, it's like gauze on the wound, like when you hold a torch up in a dark alleyway, gray walls lit with routine sorrow. I found a photo of us together, both smiling. I want to recall that without the pain, to conjure his body beside mine. I reject before and after. I want do-overs. My marble spun out of the circle, but that was a mistake, it slipped from my hand. I have to do this, because the after of his death overwhelms me as if I have fallen in a snow drift, my whole body frigid and soggy. All the songs now are adagio and dreadful. I miss the allure, the rasp of his beard against my skin, the way we never said anything, but understood everything. How we read each other like the oldest book on the shelf, the one with the worn black spine that opened so easily to the best part.