He and his wife haven’t gone to the
movies in years. The tickets are too
expensive and the cost of popcorn is
outrageous. But almost every evening
after he goes to bed and puts the mys-
tery down on the night stand, he enters
the cinema verite, the theatre of the
absurd or a moving abstract painting —
cubism gone crazy, stretched out and
elongated swirling in figure eights,
sometimes an Edward Munch painting.
In the morning, he usually remembers
and, with detailed accounts, tells his
patient wife. Sometimes, rarely, the
dream becomes a Danse Macabre poem.
Every once in a while during the night
he finds himself clutching a pillow
close to his chest to protect the
scarred heart. When he feels the ache
deep inside he knows the scar still has
a small opening out of which drips the
blood of lost love. It is then he sees
her, not an abstraction; she’s still
forty-nine and lovely. Awake, he hears
his wife breathing softly and the Choco-
late Lab rustling, the dog-tags jang-
ling as he shakes himself awake. The
man gently, lovingly pats his wife on
her butt. As he dresses, he remembers
that it is the anniversary of his late
wife’s birth. He motions to the dog and
closes the door behind them. He and the
dog head outside. When they return, he
will send his children, who are app-
roaching the age she was when she died,
a simple e-mail about the date of their
mother’s birth and how old she would
have been, not to remind them but to
let them know that he has not forgotten.
On each anniversary of her birth and
death he will do this. He will do this
on the morning after the night she appears
to him as he clutches the pillow close
to his scarred heart.