Shroud

Ted Morrissey

Your left-behind clothes still occupy closets and
clotheslines in the basement. She refuses to
donate them away, insisting that family may want
them (implying should want them). But it feels like
clothing oneself in Laertes’ shroud, where an un-
finished thread may hang exposed, left incomplete
by clever Penelope, who wove and unwove to
keep the suitors at bay, to halt time, delay the fated.
Just as she is doing now, to stay the complete-
ness of your death, leave the final act unfulfilled,
a thread left unfixed. Clothes hang here, are folded
there, frozen, amplifying your absence more than
the framed photos on the walls, as she awaits your
sail, white on the horizon: gift of beneficent gods.