I found him at the Triangle Tavern. He turned on his barstool, looked over my shoulder like searching for the exit, spat full in my face. My real husband s dead, I said, walked out backwards. Found my way to the women s shelter. Social worker says I got to fight this tumor, swallow these meds.
Hair grows back like soft threads.
Copyright 1995, Maura Alia Bramkamp Maura Alia Bramkamp, editor of Paper Boat , has had her poetry appear in the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, The Healing Woman, Exhibition , and other journals. She teaches poetry workshops in the Chimacum Schools, Washington.