So unlike you to leave early,
unfinished work a trail across the desk,
glasses perched on top hiding your intent
not to return.
Next morning, your computer blinks
the arrival of messages of no consequence
now that youve shot yourself in the head.
Your note at home was so like you
explained nothing but site:
……. I’m under the deck,
……dont look, call for help.
Weeks pass, we still linger
outside your open door —
as though youre connected
to this place, might suddenly appear,
demand to know what we are doing.
Our funereal tones of those first days
when death was fresh
an avalanche, a tidal wave
metamorphosed into chips
of obsidian humor: Well at least
he didn’t do it at work.
Do you suicides congregate
in some otherworldly space,
chat about pros and cons —
oven, river, gun, pills, knife,
a leap, a rope, asphyxiation?
You would have weighed options.
Ive adopted your philodendron,
twisted and overgrown,
pruned its stalk.
You called it a phoenix, invulnerable
unlike you.
Carol J. Jennings was born and grew up in western New York State. She attended The College of Wooster, and received her B.A., M.A., and J.D. from New York University. She worked as an attorney with the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection for more than 30 years. Now retired, she lives in Washington DC. Her poems have appeared in The New York Quarterly, Potomac Review, Oberon, Amelia, Chautauqua, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, Loch Raven Review, and three anthologies. Her first poetry collection, The Dead Spirits at the Piano, was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2016.