MY HUSBAND’S THERAPIST GIVES HIM PERMISSION

to leave me. I’m free to be, to go wherever.
Dreams of exotic jobs fill my nights—their generous
per diems, stays in London’s Savoy with butler
service & the Georges V in Paris. No more prix fixe
lunches with cheap wine. Chilled Sancerre
& plummy Châteauneuf-de-Pape will fill crystal stemware.
I float back to an Alpine pasture at sunset. 
Cow bells clang different tones as a string 
quartet plays Hayden & I spoon fresh strawberries 
in thick double cream. From a pew at St. Stephen’s
in Mainz, Chagall’s stained-glass windows 
wash me in a feast of blue, Moses 
& the Commandments, & a host of floating
angels. Quarter hours chime from the steeple 
& my marriage slips off my skin.  

Sandi Stromberg is the author of the poetry collection Frogs Don’t Sing Red. Her work has appeared in Panoply, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Pulse, equinox, Gyroscope Review, San Pedro River Review, MockingHeart Review, The Windhover, The Senior Class, among other small literary journals and anthologies. An editor at The Ekphrastic Review, she also edited two anthologies of poetry—Untameable City and Echoes of the Cordillera—and is a four-time Pushcart and two-time Best of the Net nominee. Dutch translations of her poems have appeared in Brabant Cultureel.