Huge and unembarrassed, my friend
floated like a Buddha in the small pool.
I drank iced tea, graded
chlorine-splashed papers
on The Mayor of Casterbridge.
When she had her baby
on a bed covered with a shower curtain,
I did what I was told, sealed
the placenta in a plastic bag,
stashed it in the freezer.
Life was breathless in its daring
or boring in its routine. Newly married,
I loved a man so desperate
for his young son back east
he cried in my arms.
I wanted to miss someone
that much. I quit my job,
sold my yellow Mustang,
divvied up the wedding gifts,
some of them unopened.
Had I ever mourned my father?
Did she plant the placenta under a tree?
How much can you miss
a husband you so easily walked out on?
Wendy Mnookin’s new book, Dinner with Emerson, is being published by Tiger Bark Press in March 2016. Mnookin has taught poetry at Emerson College, Boston College, and Grub Street. She is now mostly retired to spend more time writing and enjoying her grandchildren. She lives with her husband in Newton, Massachusetts.
