It is a strange kind of club we build, women
who have been grateful for death.
We steep bitter mint tea in tap water
boiled on gas ranges, we spend a full hour
talking around the point, and then
a lull. And someone will say:
he died in West Virginia. I’ve never been back.
Or, John died a few years ago, and now
I’ve finally made a photo album of my kids
when they were young; I cut his face out.
Someone will say, he got a quiet end, some nurse
told me sclerosis. It was too good an end.
This is the only grief circle I have been to
that does not cry.