Author: Lee Keylock
Location: Sandy Hook, CT

Lee Keylock, originally from Essex, England, settled in the U.S. in 1990. He is a teacher of English at Newtown High School, Sandy Hook, CT. His poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review and Caduceus.

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That He Could do Something as Intimate
as Die and not Share that Moment with Her

leaves her breathless. Like his last breath
that, suspended in silk-black sky,
vapored from his mouth when he died
in arms unknown to her.

She wonders which balaclavad-face
holding a raised gun over his Tri-Colour-
draped corpse held him when he died.
Gazed into his bloodied eyes that London
night when the bomb he set discharged,
peppered his face with glass intended for others.

Those eyes once graced her body.
Breath smooth kept time with hers.
Misted her face while intimately they spun
before exploding into sleep under skies
that starred their bodies.

Now she sits alone.
Observes mourners embrace
one another under a bitter sky.
Sob their tears into soil
soon to deflesh his body.
Vulgar displays of life
when he is so dead.

And she wonders who held him
when he died,
like that,
him,
without her.

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