WHITEOUT

I ceased wearing white long ago.
But that day in Oulu, your birthday,
I wished I'd kept my wedding dress.
It would have blended perfectly into the snow,
unlike my deep red hat and coat.

Then, unobserved, I could have openly watched
you and she: your shared passion, such intimacy
as we never had - not even in the beginning.
With us, something fundamental was missing.
We were lopsided, awkward, a three-legged polar bear.

You embraced her there on the railway platform,
but all I could see were tatters
of precious satin slashed, bleeding white,
spanning the tracks to where my heart also bled profusely
into the snow behind the station house.

As the two of you boarded the train and I watched it leave,
your final words resurfaced to haunt me: "I'm sorry."
The ice cut deeper than it did back then,
when I considered black lace a cure-all.
Oh that last tumble in a metre of snow...

Then before I knew it, you were gone.
Not even those letters I found made sense.
I was in denial - it was all a bad joke.
"You are my husband," I screamed into the void you left behind.
But my words were swallowed by the endless white.



I will be around until Saturday, then I will be away for a week or so in a place without electricity.
I will miss you all...:(
So until my return...have a fabulous week xxx