Two Poems | The Walrus

"I could not possibly throw nearly a month's worth of his briefs down the chute to be landfill-crushed, so I've made them a lair in one of my own deep drawers. Do I hear them thrumming in there? They don't feel like they were ever filled by him. Their condition, flattened, piled like leaves, is spiritual, the most disembodied of underpants never again waiting to wrap his ass, his athlete's glutes - nor expecting to."

"When I first went to bed with someone else after my husband died, I thought I'd have to be half-crazy to take my clothes off, but then I looked up, and there he was at the foot of the bed: the very one I thought I'd have always, but who became a ghost. I watched him go off into his afterlife beyond our bedroom that is so cozy I sometimes eat dinner here with the little gas fireplace and the TV."

She preserves a month's worth of her late husband's briefs in a deep drawer because Value Village will not accept underwear and she cannot discard them. The briefs lie flattened and piled like leaves, described as spiritual and disembodied, no longer expected to wrap his athletic body. The garments, in red, navy, black, orange and grey, hum with cotton voices that echo his daily humming. When she slept with someone else, she saw him as a neutral, tomblike figure at the foot of the bed who observed the new partner and then receded. As his specter faded, she regained a sense of bodily worth and return to life.

Read at The Walrus