[MY WIFE LEFT ME: A FRAGMENT]

My wife left me. She said she needed her own space, her own place, an apartment in the city. I didn’t know what to say. I said OK.

After that, there was some crying. She’d visit the house about half the week, then just visit weekends, then just around 2 or 3 hours on a Sunday to do her laundry. And see me.

I’d cry until I couldn’t breathe, and she’d smile and laugh and say, “That’s just your love for me.”

She got a tattoo, a matching ankle tattoo with an older woman at a women’s retreat, a big thick spiral in deep black on her pale white skin. I used to love to take photos of Elle, black+white. Back then, she dyed her hair black, and she was perfect: high contrast with a shade of grey.

Elle’s new friend is rich, retired, divorced, and “doesn’t take any shit,” Elle says. She wants to be like her, I think. This is the beginning of the end.

Past Poet Laureate of Kansas (2017-2019) Kevin Rabas teaches at Emporia State University, where he directs the Creative Writing Program and the Donald Reichardt Center for Publishing & the Literary Arts. He has sixteen books, including Lisa’s Flying Electric Piano, a Kansas Notable Book and Nelson Poetry Book Award winner.