Rent control and stubbornness / Kept her there for fifty-seven years

Thorn throated widow led me / to a riverside graveyard.

I’m guilty of allowing            a few memories to dominate my identity  

21 months = ~630 days = the amount of time she hasn’t wanted to die

She couldn’t say it straight. / She told it slant like a sideways rain, / turned suffering into a simile.