* * *

evenly and ivory in her raw recollection she reasoned helplessly at least one of us is wrong to labor and to love and to endure childbirth knowing the worst would come before the best should have driven her to adore one like him

the wind reeked of dust the seeming and the looking the fumbling and the fidgeting she could not bear his weariness so they slept by turns of the screw and when the nightshade lifted the cock crow blared as the morning flared through a horizon of tawny sludge

she could not help but rust away she sat all about staring at the floor yawning scornful wrinkles revolving around her eyes she had long since learned to draw a stringent line between devotion unearned and sentiment prepaid

her mind closed stubbornly against all remembrance you have taken an oath before God for better or for worse his muzzle made demands that she acquire his version of what their life in tandem should entail yet in the most insufficient of remarks he could sustain no veracity his corruption concealed submerged by shameful disquisition if he had died she might have lived