To wear your dead husband’s sweatshirt
long after his scent has faded,
the cotton soft, wrist and waist bands
frayed, the white Wrigley Field
still bright, to pull the hood over your head,
nestle into darkness the way he would on a cold night,
to conjure him, slideshow of your lives
playing in the background, shot by shot,
as if this cloth could incarnate the self
who wore it, day after day, year after year,
or the self who you were, to be that self for an instant,
glimpse whatever it was— joy, sorrow—
that made you whole,
to know yourself forever changed,
glimpse or no glimpse, gone forever.
To not know, in the vast space
of grief, who you ever could become,
and ask who, without despair
to ask with hope—