Cleave

by Amy Fleury

Back in the bed of our gone son’s begetting
we drift on the raft of our grief. You join
our fingers together, your wedding band
glinting in the rivering dark. My tears salt
your shoulder. Your whiskers catch my hair.
We have only endured a week of ever-after.

Tenderly we turn toward each other, return
to the skin and breath that created a life.
The sheets eddy around us as our touch
brings us back to the source of comfort.
Here we cling and we cleave, knowing
that somewhere someone is dying.

 
Amy Fleury is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Beautiful Trouble and Sympathetic Magic, both from the Crab Orchard Series of Southern Illinois University Press, and a chapbook, Reliquaries of the Lesser Saints (RopeWalk Press). Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming from The Penn Review, 32 Poems, Image, swamp pink, and other journals. She lives and teaches in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.