My 92-year old father stands before the judge in traffic court. He’s received twelve violations in the last 10 months. The judge asks him if he understands that the HOV lane is only for cars with a driver and at least one passenger. My father nods. The judge then asks why does he keep driving in the HOV lane when he’s the only one in the car. My father stammers, sobs. The judge asks if he would like to sit down. My father nods. When the judge asks the question again, my father explains that 10 months ago his wife of 64 years died. “She’s so real to me,” he says. “But she’s not,” the judge says. My father pounds the table three times, “But she is.”

Appeared in Copper Nickel

Like when she takes out a 1000-piece
Abstract—a Kandinsky or mandala of Buddha’s numberless lives-
she’s telling me she hasn’t lost hope yet
but it’s iffy for us.

When Lois slides from the shelf
one from The World’s Great Destinations series, for example,
“Balloons on a Spring Night over Paris,”—actually, any place
we’ve been together—she’s wishing she had wings,

or for us to be as we once were, or for me to be less
of the version I’ve become and more
like that witty, hipless
Mick Jagger-looking waiter on Rue de Marie.

When Lois says I should mind my harsh speech,
my miserliness, but my wobbly, yellow belly can stay, I sense
somewhere, she has a puzzle of me
that she works like a voodoo doll, snapping
out pieces of me she wants gone.

When Lois is lost in a puzzle of a place we’ve only dreamt
of visiting together—“Kenyan Migration”
or “Nile Nightscape”—I know
the passing fantasy of Leave Michael
has arrived on her to-do list, between 1% milk
and light bulbs.

So I boil her a kettle
of Himalayan hibiscus tea, letting
the lama sanctified kaleidoscopic leaves steep
a full six minutes, and bring her her large creamy white cup—the one
scripted with the giant O for Oprah’s autograph,

and the almond biscuits with the dark chocolate bits she hides
behind the legumes and soup cans, and she’s right to.
My lack of restraint is notorious.

I carry a lamp up from downstairs, put a pillow
at her back, and remind her not to hunch and when she’s taking on the 2000-piece Colosseum—
that Rome
is still being built. It’s the journey. Then I bow away.

When I can’t do a puzzle, it’s because, Lois says,
I don’t know myself.

When I ask, where does this go,
she looks at me as if she’s wondering the same.

Appeared in Ploughshares