After I wrote a gentle villanelle,
I dislodged my voice box,
rested that weight
next to the Remington typewriter
I borrowed from Barry,
my ex-brother-in-law.
For the duration of the night,
I wouldn’t need to converse
with Mary’s ashes.
The cremated echo of her voice
sat snug in the urn on my mantle.
Once I found Sleep
naked on black bedroom carpet,
it crawled into my brain, a warmth
like Mary’s voice
reverberating in chamber one
of my married heart.
I awoke to my voice box shivering —
through a cracked-open window,
Wind assaulted my villanelle
still in the grip of Barry’s typewriter.
When I read my words,
the poem screamed back
in her still-alive voice.