How It Was
I told him I liked the lights low
The music soft and I liked to be asked.
He told me he liked the bedroom windows
Open to the stars and he loved surprises.
When he died I was asleep
In the chair beside his bed.
I don’t know the how of his dying:
If he struggled, if he called me.
I just don’t know. I was wakened
By nurses running to answer
The dial tone of the flat-line.
In the after of us I really didn’t try -
Never got the hang of cooking for one,
Didn’t bother to make the bed,
Couldn’t sit through a movie, finish a book.
I took down all the blinds and the drapes
Let the daylight wake me
Let the night into the bedroom.
Julianna McCarthy lives above the snow line, with a dog and two cats in Southern California's Los Padres National Forest. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in The Antioch Review, Alehouse, 51%, Stellazine , Spot Literary Magazine and she contributes quarterly to ensemblejourine.com. She holds an MFA in Poetry from New England College. (juliannamcc@yahoo.com)