(As a Wife) 16 Months

It is hard to remind myself that I am being better than before.

I’ve had no time to grieve—none of us have. I feel so much that I do not even know what I am feeling, and it is often still so hard to breathe, though I am told that I have healed, and though I hate the ocean, we never once went to the beach. It’s too late now.

As the neighbor’s bamboo spills farther o’er the fence and scrapes the siding off our little rented house, and as the dead pecan tree sways between the pines and in the dark, I lay in bed and watch the ceiling and I wonder if it falls while we’re asleep, what will happen to the cats, but in the morning when I sweep and make the coffee, it is strong again. I am so tired.