The Widows' Handbook: Poetic Reflections on Grief and Survival

In the Woods

196 the widows’ handbook In the Woods Patricia L. Goodman Your pants are pressed and hung in your closet, your shirts clean, ironed just as you like them. Your glasses await you in my car, your old brown jacket on its hook in the garage. I haven’t changed anything, except to sit at your desk and begin to take into my own hands the running of this farm; the bills, the mowing, the tractor repairs you always handled. In a disconnected way, I keep thinking you might return, that this has been a terrible dream, that I only imagine I found you in the woods, your new blue raincoat soaked and splattered with blood. ...