The Coarse Truth

// Jacqueline Jules

I still find things when I clean closets,
like the speckled tan tie you wore to our wedding.
It has a stain. Champagne, perhaps?
We drank that day — like all young couples —
to a future we didn’t expect to spill
after seventeen years
on a rose-colored carpet in the middle of June.

Who would I be had I not buried you?
The question still itches sometimes
as I snuggle with a new love
beneath the coarse truth
of my current life.

Your death reduced me to larva.
But time inside a silken cocoon
gave me wings I would not give back.
I loved my old body,
but this one suits me, too,
and some creatures are destined
to live their lives in stages,
each one distinct and beautiful
while it lasts.