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GRAY JACOBIK

THE EX

In the placable air of long dissolved discord, we wait

with our daughter, days overdue, our single shared

goodness. She carries our first grandchild.

In thirty years, not a word has tiptoed across

the continent between us. We've led vastly different

lives. He's not unkind, only holds a dizzying number

of opinions. Like bombarding mosquitoes they fly in

and out of range. Across my face I draw a tight mask

of passive acquiescence. The skeleton underneath

threatens to grin, but he's the one who's dying--

of AIDS and its complications--the effeminate,

virginal boy I married when I was twenty-two.

Can anything be said to those we betrayed and

abandoned? Neither of us knew ourselves; each

feared we'd be destroyed by the other's needs.

That fear seems exorbitant from here, and pointless,

yet I remember staggering about for weeks feeling

as though a beast were daily ripping the sternum

out of my chest. We shred our nerves against the grate

of one another's youthful insecurities. Weak, slight,

vulnerable, only his voice is unchanged—

I must have loved its sound once! Maybe, strangely,

in the unreckonable realm of human life—our daughter's

and her child's--whoever we marry is ours forever.

And in some sense he is mine, and I almost want him,

but only out of pity, or forgotten guilt. All the dross

that had to go was long since skimmed off. Here

we are, his once-wife, my once-husband, the child

we made who is with child, this summer evening's

sterling light and the mystery of how each moment

goes on and on and holds us present until the last.