The dozen ways they did it—
off a bridge, the back of a boat,
pills, head in the oven, or
wrapped in her mother’s old mink coat in the garage, a brick on the accelerator,
the Cougar’s motor thrumming
while she crossed over.
What they left behind—
the outline of a stalled novel, diaries,
their best poems, the note that ends
now will you believe me,
offspring of various ages, spouses
who cared and weep and yet
admit relief now that it’s over.
How they fester, the old details
held to the light like a stained-glass icon
—the shotgun in the mouth, the string
from tow to trigger; the tongue
a blue plum forced between his lips
when he hanged himself in her closet—
for us it is never over
. . .
who raced to the scene, cut the noose,
pulled the bathtub plug on pink water,
broke windows, turned off the gas,
rode in the ambulance, only minutes later
to take the body blow of bad news.
We are trapped in the plot, every one.
Left behind, there is no oblivion.
first published in The Atlantic, Oct. 1, 2000 and then in The Long Marriage, W.W. Norton, 2002.
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