The Widow's Window

The evening light, more gray than dusk yellow,

filtering through cracked windowpanes as dust,

cast shadows on her threadbare dress like faded

bones. She rested one hand on the chilled sill,

the other on her brow bowed low. Outside,

her farm’s fallow fields dimmed in the November

nightfall, the air breathless as a shuttered cellar,

canned goods lined cobwebbed like tombstones.

The route from 46, Bandera to Blanco,

passed without a glance, she a postscript, a postcard

never delivered. A mongrel cur, one ear clipped

like a bus ticket collected, trudged down the weed-strewn

road wending toward her home and wandered off like

a memory. Looking up, she saw the night’s last light fade.