Joshua Whitaker

I remember you from college,

the girl who baked cupcakes

and laughed through her nose.

You don’t know this, but I mocked

you then, while I ate your cupcakes

with all our friends. Back then,

I thought your laugh was a cover-up,

artificial and perverse.

Your coffee cup sat between us

the day you said, “Your frown

could darken a planet.”

I laughed in your face and left

to fight in Iraq. Through three

deployments, a roadside bomb,

and the Second Great Depression

you stalked my mind,

while I tried to forget your honesty.

You made too much sense.

I saw you in the newspaper

six weeks before my first heart attack,

“Loving wife, mother, and grandmother.”

You probably died laughing.

I put down the paper and fingered

the crease between my eyes.

First published in 2011 in The Ivy Leaves Journal of Literature and Art, vol. 85, p. 33.