The Happy Couple

The husband

Driving home from their date, he didn’t
see the car dig into his lane and his life.
It was touch and go for a month with
his rheumatic heart trying to be heard
over an aching conscience and her tears.
But he made himself choose and married
the redhead girl with the lopped face
and forgot the blonde who didn’t
ride with him that night.

The wife

She paints watercolors with a half gaze;
her left eye torn from the car accident
where she lost the tip of her nose.
Now she washes colors over parchment
and fights to find each blurry form:
trumpet vine, martin house,
rows of peach sultanas by the lake.
She grips images and winces
when they reach into her mind
where the windshield clearly
first came into view.