she knows everything raging out there

everything twisting inside the sudden knocking

shifts in the siding clicks like desperate rodents

she knows what she can let in and what must be kept away

the wind, shaped by the window casing does her howling for her

easy sober, controlled sorrow contracted from strangers

and then someone, anyone, phones a kind word and

the voice becomes a makeshift home though distant and comfortless

in the calm of her answering she realizes her acceptance of tragedy

this is nothing heroic but ordinary

he is not coming back

she cannot hold him again on her neck

she will never feel his breath on her neck she will always feel just wind