Living in the Land of Limbo: Fiction and Poetry about Family Caregiving

14. The Sick Wife

78 Fiction and Poetry about Family Caregiving 14 The Sick Wife  Jane Kenyon The sick wife stayed in the car while he bought a few groceries. Not yet fifty, she had learned what it’s like not to be able to button a button. It was the middle of the day— and so only mothers with small children or retired couples stepped through the muddy parking lot. Dry cleaning swung and gleamed on hangers in the cars of the prosperous. How easily they moved— with such freedom, even the old and relatively infirm. The windows began to steam up. The cars on either side of her pulled away so briskly that it made her sick at heart. Jane Kenyon, “The Sick Wife,” from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1996 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org. ...