Bread Alone

Bread Alone

82 Bread Alone Didn’t you ask for watermelon last night? And didn’t I serve you a plate with four red wedges in the dark? The children were moving slowly toward bed and the room was lit by the screen’s blue reminders of our relentless defeats. In the disordered and alien light your body took the shape of a broken limb—a willow, a dogwood, an elm— some beautiful, elegant species dying piecemeal of unnatural causes. And I wish my love poems had more gifts in them, and secrets and a feast to savor together. And I wish everything good between us hadn’t dwindled to this. 83 But didn’t you ask me for watermelon? And didn’t you sometimes receive at least half of what you needed to survive? ...