Cyclic

by Erin Matheson Ritchie

Michelle divorces her husband and passes
a decidual cast the same week, her body
expelling eight years’ entropy with a vise grip
cramp more painful than the split.

For a month she commands the aux cord, sprawls
diagonal in a king bed, jills off to ‘party of one’
slipping from waiters’ lips. Solitude slinks
around her shoulders and drips in the dimple

where her ring used to nestle.
Winter skulks between blankets and she takes to bed
the first mirage who speaks like her ex.
Again the lining thickens, a breakdown ahead.

Erin Matheson Ritchie lives in California with her spouse and pet rabbit. She earned her master’s degree in education at Stanford University and taught secondary English. Her poems appear in New Feathers Anthology, Naugatuck River Review, and Oracle: A Fine Arts Review.