Until Death

Hemingway left his wife Hadleyand because she would not cometo their house to retrieve her thingsafter he'd slept with her friend, he hauledeverything up the street in a cart, crying.I strip the curtains off the rods myselfand skirt around your lowered browfor my grandmother's coffee table.I recite Dickinson to myself:How dreary — to be — Somebody!and leave our apartment, dry-eyed, owl-eyed.Once, you and I sat in the back of a wedding:lilies overpowering the sconces,your sinuses. We both cried.I didn't want to be a wife.The afterparty spilled voluptuousinto the hotel hallways, smelling of chlorine.I came up for air in our room, pressed my foreheadagainst the windowpane to see myself again.I repeated myself, I warned you,reminding you of Hemingway's cartand our tour of Mammoth Cave,the longest cave system in the world:you striding ahead through stalagmitesand alien-green pools. Us apart.Your shirt hung on your shoulder blades limplyin the still cave air. I buried my gasping in yawns.In the hotel afterward, you read the onlyHemingway you could stomach: I wishedI had died before I had ever loved anyone but her.I said, “I'd rather you just lived.”