Thirty years

Thirty years in, Mr. Kent fell again
for the Ms. Kent he’d loved the first three.
She’d been a slip of a girl then with
sweet eyes and a
dancing gait
with
smooth legs
under a cotton skirt;
the memory
crept to his side in stolen minutes
or idle hours
when he could lie with it a while
and feel relieved.

Ms. Kent was a woman
who aged quietly,
shrinking with little opposition
into the hollows between her bones.

Still, she liked sometimes to go out
and find some manically colored dress
to take home and try on for just herself.
She’d pull the fabric to her hips
and let it drop to her calves–
It’d drop
like a sheet over a portrait.