Speculation

Leaves gossip in the wind.  How do I know if they tell

the truth now that they're strewn on the ground?

A boy comes to my house and knocks on the window.

His tight knuckles are stones against glass.

He wants to sell me a paper I don't want to read.

I give him a dollar, spread the classifieds

inside the iron cage where my parrot shits

on women seeking casual encounters.

I placed an ad years ago, met a man

who tied me to the bedposts and threatened

to leave me there for my husband to find.

I knew I would pay for this.  Someday.

The last time I sprawled naked on the bed

the telephone brought news, a car

veering on ice, a windshield shattered,

your body pitched into a ravine where water

flowed from the city as if it could escape.

I couldn't move for days.  All around me, voices

filled with speculation, how you'd been drinking,

how you'd been seeing someone else.

Hands covered me with a blanket.

They brought me soup with thin white noodles

that could have been bodies floating down a river,

headed to a place bodies don't belong.