Two Women, Two Paths by David Adès

Two Women, Two Paths 1. One woman is holding on white-knuckled hard. She wears her grief buttoned up tight holding herself within it fearing her own disappearance fearing air on skin fearing the world beyond him. She takes it to her bed as talisman as substitute as protector to ward off his absent warmth at night. She is widow to memories of him. They are a temple, a shrine she visits every day bearing longing bearing words bearing despair. Her eyes still fix upon the spaces he once occupied as if to prise an image a shadow some vestige of his presence lingering still. She stands on the spot unable or unwilling to move and those that surrounded her at first with empathy with compassion with solicitude are as thoughts drifting away. 2 A second woman is heavy sliding letting go. She is alone after sixty years of marriage after caring for him a dozen stroked-out years unable now to care for herself. She has lost interest in counting her losses in the search for meaning in the daily news. She has given up thoughts of returning home of seeing her second grandchild married of holding her great grandchild for the first time. She is shrinking into herself finding the path to disappearance abandoning desire abandoning food abandoning mobility. She is moving on finding the way back to him step by step while those who love her argue and cajole urge her to get up and walk to eat a little more to bend her will and stay.

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