Gardening in the morning quells your anxieties. Quietly, you pull on your faded sweatpants and a T-shirt. You don’t put on a bra but cover up well in case your backyard neighbors say hello over the fence on their way to church. You like talking to Maria, the mother, about gardening and cooing over her new dog, a schnauzer named Jeffrey.

You go out back without first making coffee because you don’t want the high-pitched whining of the bean grinder to wake your husband. But you don’t like making half decaf, half caf, the way he likes it. You like all caf.

With gloveless hands you pull limp brown strands from the lilies. They don’t flower much anymore; perhaps their roots are choked. You’re in the yard a lot, the only place you never worry.

You like being married. You feel secure, if lonely at times. You’d been so attracted to him at first. Six feet tall, he weighed 165 pounds and had dark hair and pale green eyes. His black eyelashes were so long they caught snowflakes.

You were comforted that he was both good and trustworthy. He’d been a Rotary president, and there was a scholarship in his father’s name for high school students. Your father left you with a pile of bills and a couple of mad-hatter ex-wives.

You don’t like how he reads his mail while you talk to him. You did stop overreacting to the sounds of the football games coming from his basement room (so much screaming).

You could often predict what he was going to say. Maybe it was okay that your relationship focused on the physical world: does the porch need painting, have you seen my dry-cleaning slip?

This week you researched taking a vacation with him to a spa in Wisconsin. You think he’ll like the tour of its design center. He’s a businessman, Dr. G. said when you mentioned his coldness. He works for a steel company—selling custom steel, copper, and titanium, products that are sawn and cut, without personalities. A former boss’s file notes say he “has trouble keeping a wife.” You are his third.

You take clippers over to the Rose of Sharon that’s squeezed into the back corner of the yard, shaded by the neighbor’s crabapple tree. You clip your neighbor’s tree instead.

You miss your little white Bichon, Candy Pearl. She slept in her bed on the floor next to your side of the Tempur-Pedic® knockoff your husband ordered from e-mattress dot com.

Dogs weren’t allowed in the bedroom—your husband claimed to be allergic—even when you asked if he’d change his mind if you were dying. But, after your little black dog, Beau, died, you cried so much he allowed Candy in the bedroom.

Last night when you were emptying the dishwasher, he came over and kissed you on the mouth. You went to the movies and saw an Irish film called Once. On the way home he told you he thought the theme song was pretty. When you got home, he went to his basement office and you went to bed to read.

Maybe you weren’t capable of high-quality intimacy. You’d never considered leaving him because of his liver disease. He once referred to his liver biopsy as a liver autopsy, and when you pointed out the slip, he said, “they rhyme.” He was on interferon therapy during your honeymoon.

This morning you want to tell him how well the new Apple Serviceberry tree is hiding the pole where the cable lines are strung.

You go upstairs expecting to see him in bed. You’re surprised he’s in the shower, both showerheads going full steam, the shower curtain closed. You ask if he’s going to meet his friend A. for breakfast.

He says yes.

“You spend more time with A. than with me these days.” A vibe overtakes you and you snap, “Are you having an affair?”

Through the steam, he says, “I’ll talk to you when I get out of the shower.”

You move toward the bedroom but can’t sit on the bed. You don’t know what to do with your body. You have nothing to hold onto.

The shower is off. He dries himself standing inside with the curtain open.

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“She’s a waitress from Thailand who lives in L.A.”

“Did you meet her when you were out there in October for the convention?”

“Yes. But you never noticed I haven’t worn my wedding ring for a year. I think we should separate.” He keeps shaving.

You erupt in tears, double over and cover your face with your hands. He’s next to you and you don’t know if those are tears on his face or wetness from shaving.

“You said we are just like roommates anyway,” he says. He doesn’t even love you enough to hate you.

You go into your little office and fold into yourself on the Berber carpet. You are the AARP poster for an older woman being left. You smell like the yard. Was that only thirty minutes ago?

He stands in your doorway and announces he’s leaving to spend the day with A. “Oh, and I won’t be mowing the lawn this afternoon.”

You thought he’d worn his wedding ring at dinner a few weeks ago at a fish restaurant in Wicker Park. The plates were orange glass, and you winced when he slurped his soup. Afterward, on the sidewalk, you took his hand and he said, “You haven’t done that in a long time.”

You call your sister and gasp when she says hello. She asks, “What’s wrong?” You tell her you’re getting divorced. That your husband just walked out and left you alone with your flowerbeds.

Coloratura On A Silence Found In Many Expressive Systems

by Alice Fulton

  Coloratura On A Silence Found In Many Expressive Systems extends tactile mysteries to existential questions of invisible miracles, connection, and faith in the face of silence: “By praying you, I create you,” Fulton informs an elusive God. Reveling in the stunning possibilities of language, she seeks joy to counteract trauma and grief, empathizes with the silent pathos of animals, and finds solace in art, friendship, and the mysterious power of gifts. Without denying suffering, this enthralling volume extends a fervent prayer for gratitude and healing. Fulton borrows tropes and theories from science, linguistics, visual art, [and] mathematics…It is this kind of sonic and imaginative range—which puts into conversation the music of what is voiced with what is silent, invisible—that makes it almost impossible to talk about the powerful hold of these poems…Perhaps more than any poet writing today, Fulton takes to heart John Keats’s belief that writing poetry is a ‘vale of soul-making.’...‘You have to listen,’ she admonishes, ‘louder than you sing.’ Is there a more attentive listener than Alice Fulton? A more haunted and haunting singer? — Lisa Russ Spaar, On the Seawall   Alice Fulton is the featured poet in the spring 2024 issue of Persimmon Tree.

Available from W.W. Norton, Amazon, or Bookshop.org.

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