In the car on the way home
after dropping Linda off at the Ferry,
my wife begins to complain about me again,
one of those harpies eating the liver out of my chest,
telling me that I talk about her all the time,
even the children said I talk about her too much,
and I relate everything to her and she’s sick of it,
and she explains that at Mystic Seaport
she took my camera away
because I was taking too many pictures of her.
“I feel like you’re burying me,” she says,
“It’s like I’m already dead.”
Such a terrible thing to say to me.
I don’t understand. But I’m not going to argue.
Her feelings are her feelings.
But then she stops herself suddenly
like jerking the reigns on a horse,
sees that she is being hard on me again.
She begins to cry,
“I don’t want you carrying all of this,
things are definitely getting better,
we are working our way through
this rough spot in our relationship.”
The rough spot again. The damn
ubiquitous rough spot.
I can’t seem to get rid of this rough spot.
I don’t believe her. I know she thinks
our recent troubles are all my fault,
she hasn’t done anything wrong,
she’s the same as she was a year ago,
it’s all me and my obsession with her.
But maybe she is feeling a little responsible
and guilty for picking on me
because in the middle of the night,
for the first time ever in our long marriage,
she says a few words in her sleep,
so clear and sure, yet trembling at the same time,
“Where are you going? Michael. Michael.”
About Michael Estabrook
