10. THE CHOSEN ONE

I couldn’t know what it would mean,
That day I sat there by your bedside
Witnessing your labored journey into Death.
How I’d be left here at the center of my life
To face the turning of the years without you.
How I’d be the one to tell our children you were gone,
To comfort them and let them comfort me.
How I’d become your Widow and,
Because of all the love you’d left behind,
There’d be so many who would come to me
In hopes of feeling some small speck
Of how they’d felt when you would sit with them,
How, with your magic, you would make the world seem
Safe, abundant, clean, and filled with love.
These ways you had, I think you left some with me
When, some moments past your final breath,
I felt you cut a path right through me,
Open up a portal, change me, finally,
If too late for you to be the beneficiary,
Into the one you’d chosen 20 years before,
The one you knew was there so long before I did.