The dead rose stood in its glass,
head hanging.
In those first sudden moments
of his death,
she stood in a trance
of love and grief.
The pain swallowed her up
and tossed her around
that hellish place of shadows
and the silence
of nothing to anticipate inside her nightmare
of violent, unthinkable change.

The gulf between the living and dead
gaped fathomless.
As the truth of his death
hollowed her out,
there seemed to be no reaching
the bottom of her grief.

Pain ran round her jaw
crept into her eyes,
a definite and welcome feeling
compared to the chaos
of constant shrieking
silently in her head.

By the flame of a solitary candle,
she stitched his death
with black eyes on white satin,
as her room became furred
by distracted neglect.

But surely, though slowly,
she emptied herself
of prayer and incantations
for she'd had enough of pious pain
from being lonely among
a sea of sad faces.