Drowning
By Dyan Sandefer

When her son drowned years ago,
they pulled him from the water
but could not save him.
She wore her grief
heavy on her tiny frame,
the pounds gathering
and weighing on weakened knees,
finally binding her home, isolated.

Closed in her prison,
the books
and magazines
became
her companionship,
slowly filling her home,
first one room and then the next.

As surely as dirty pond water
filled
her son’s lungs that day,
the clutter strangled life from her.
When she died, tongues wagged.

What a mess. Such a shame.
Did you see all those papers?

Her poor husband.
She never
threw any of it away,
never got rid of it.

Another drowning.
No one knew her grief.
She wore it quietly.

Dyan Sandefer resides in Southwest La. with her husband and three children, where she struggles to write poetry about the deeper things of life, sometimes seen with a slightly skewed glance. Due to her reluctance to experience rejection, she has only recently begun to actually share her poetry with the unsuspecting world. Her work has appeared in Kota Press, PoetryRepairShop, Poetic Voices and will soon be seen in Dead Mule School of Literature. dyan sandefer@AOL.com