Ed Ruzicka
All That, Then
I never should have let you go.
Though you were already married
I never should have let you go.
Though he came to my house
in his Ford with a gun in his pocket,
seemed then just one more flea
on earth’s hide – a miserable
anarchist made of anguish
and confusion brandishing his
little pistol at me as if that had
any chance of being a solution
and handed me the letter you wrote
as he stood over you or stormed
from room to room in the upstairs flat
whose windows filled with mimosa
and crepe myrtle that summer.
Flat that was all the two of you
could afford back then. Flat up
an enclosed stairwell where my
footsteps never sounded again.
I don’t know where you are.
I have moved on. I have not
moved on. I have never known
another woman who could
have so much rain falling
through her eyes at once.
About the writer:
Ed Ruzicka has published one full length volume, Engines of Belief. His poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, Rattle, New Millennium Review, and Chicago Literati, as well as other literary journals and anthologies. Ed lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and is an occupational therapist.
Image: Portrait with Apples by Auguste Macke (1887-1914). Oil on canvas. 25.9 x 23.4 inches. 1909. Public domain.
