The Sand Hill Review               http://www.sandhillreview.org 2009

Grief

Did spending money like a drunken sailor bring rape

to my father's mind. His voice was loud and he spit words

out and I believe I recoil from men more than is normal, not

from women with their clouds of perfume at the opera. Henry

sits next to me, Henry

I might even feel safe with at the edge of a cliff. Less with the taciturn man

who buys two tickets and uses only one and whose cough I thought might mean AIDS.

Henry's wife has a scar under her nose and she sometimes gives her ticket

to her daughter, herself a mother. No way would Henry's wife part

permanently from Trevor Howard and, drowning in grief, mend with needle and pale thread.

Phyllis Koestenbaum