When My Husband, Away on a Trip,
Spoke Each Night for a Week About
a Friend's Divorce

I didn't say, "Are you questioning our marriage because your best
girl buddy from high school's divorce is final this week?"
I didn't see his fingers move like an ice flow cooling the warm
ocean of his auburn hair. I didn't close my eyes.
        I said I saw deer had visited our yard twice that day, a buck,
        a doe, two spotted fawns. I saw through my window the wild
        flower patch. I went outside to count the chewed off stems,
        to see which flowers had appealed to them.

Sheila Bender is the 1996-97 Guest Writer in Residence at Seattle University. Her poems appear in Raven Chronicles, Women's Studies Quarterly, The World, Poetry Northwest, and Seattle Review, among others. Her books on writing include Writing Personal Essays, The Writer's Journal, and Writing in a New Convertible with the Top Down.