by Lynnel Jones
I willed him to tell it, a tale he'd hinted at
but never claimed: how he trapped and
drowned her after she went off from
the farm, their twins, and his thick silence.
He never took another wife once he
proclaimed her suicide. Once and done
is what he said and taught his son, who
says it now, though he suspects - perhaps
he knows - that the folded clothes at
the edge of the dam where she was found
were stacked by his dad.
Published in Lehigh Valley Literary Review, January 2007