How to Speak of Grief
I break it to her gently. He was old, I say,
he had a good life, he was ready.
She stares back at me, waiting for more.
He won’t wake up again.
She drops her sandwich and howls.
Wracked with sobs, her body crumples,
small hands cling round my neck
as if I too might disappear,
wet face buried in my coat.
But I don’t want him to sleep forever.
I know, I weep, stroking her hair, I know.
Passing shoppers glance at the bench
where we cry for the city farm, for the field
that now stands empty, our apples left to rot.
Rachel Bower is the author of Moon Milk (Valley Press, 2018) and Epistolarity and World Literature (Palgrave