My wife cannot reach the top
of the stairs without stopping
for breath. She is thirty-eight
and looking bluer these days—
around the eyes, but also
in other ways. She touches
the place just below her breasts,
says she doesn’t feel a thing,
then brings my fingers to trace
the hollow spot that once held
our children, maybe so I
can remember her body
before the starving. Outside
a school bus squeals to a stop.
She presses her hand on mine,
blood still beating inside her.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 21, Issue 3.
Robert Fillman won the poetry contest at the 2016 Pennsylvania Writers Conference. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blueline, The Comstock Review, Kestrel, Pembroke Magazine, Salamander, Spillway, and others. He lives in eastern Pennsylvania with his wife, Melissa, and their two children, Emma and Robbie.
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