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Shortlist Saturdays: The Good Wife by Susan Richardson



The Good Wife

 

Hiding behind drawn curtains,

wishing herself invisible,

she balances on wire thin moments,

listens for footsteps,

for the rattle of a coat hanger,

a slamming front door.

 

He leaves her sadness

in the debris of his angry footfalls,

mingling with paint

peeling from walls he erected

with another wife.

 

She folds her protests into tiny shapes,

stashes them away

in the pit of her throat,

her once strong voice

choked into reedy whispers.

 

Days linger in fists of darkness,

trapped in his frigid eruption of silence,

her punishment

for a tongue untethered,

a word unleashed.

 

She cooks him dinner,

loneliness spilling into garlic mash,

regret rubbed into legs of lamb,

hopes tomorrow

he will speak to her again. 



Susan Richardson is an award winning, internationally published poet. She is the author of “Things My Mother Left Behind” from Baxter House Editions , Tiger Lily: An Ekphrastic Collection with Jane Cornwell from JC Studio Press, writes the blog, “Stories from the Edge of Blindness”, and hosts the podcast A Thousand Shades of Green. You can find her on Twitter @floweringink, listen to her on YouTube, and read more of her work on her website.

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