Mary

When he beheld stars in her eyes at play, and when he heard their laughter in her voice, he never doubted. He could but rejoice: Her soul was real, real as the Milky Way. He was a planet spinning round her glow, he was alive because she was the sun. But that was when their marriage had begun, so many warm, bright memories ago. These nights she sits inside the winter house, her hands limp in a flowered kiddy-bowl, her supper splattered on her bib and blouse, her eyes, her eyes—now denser than a hole that over pink horizons of their scars— blackens planets and eclipses stars.