Today’s Poem: Here

Rhina P. Espaillat catalogues what remains

Poul Friis Nybo’s Woman in a Bedroom, c. 1927 (Wikimedia Commons)

In 2017, Rhina P. Espaillat published a sonnet titled “Here,” after the passing of her husband, Alfred. And it is as precise a description of what remains after losing a spouse as anything English literature has to offer: “Glasses, wallet, wife — / each item’s here. Though, useless as it is, / I don’t know why. Except that it was his.” It is a poem, in my own grief, I can hardly bear to read and yet cannot bear to set aside.

After the death of Dylan Thomas, Caitlin Thomas published a 1957 memoir of her time married to the poet, with the unbearable title Leftover Life to Kill. Espaillat catalogues instead the actual leftover objects in the list-making that is a characteristic of her poetry.