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208 the widows’ handbook Poem in Praise of My Husband (Portsmouth) Tammi J. Truax (with acknowledgments to Diane di Prima) I suppose it wasn’t easy living with me either. I mean back when you were — living. You didn’t know that I’d be a poet, and I didn’t know that you’d be dead. And maybe that’s why we did cling to each other as if each thought the other was the raft. And now I, raftless, have been treading water for years. It’s made me stronger than you’d have ever thought I could be. True, a few times, exhausted, I’ve almost drowned, but I always bob back up, spitting and cursing, the me you’d recognize. And, yes, sometimes, I find something to cling to briefly, a bloated log that usually turns out to be rotten on the inside. But, sometimes, it’s kind of nice, floating freely, to new places looking up at the stars like those little kids trusting the universe about which I know nothing coping (more or less) 209 and wondering if one of those utterly unhelpful embers is, as the Eskimos believe, you. ...

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