Sandra Kolankiewicz‘s work has appeared in London Magazine, New World Writing, Into the Void, Crannog, BlazeVox, Gargoyle, Prairie Schooner, Fifth Wednesday, and Per Contra. Her books include Turning Inside Out (Black Lawrence Press), The Way You Will Go and Lost in Transition (Finishing Line Press), and When I Fell, a novel with 76 color illustrations.

Sixty Fifth Wedding Anniversary

That’s sixty five years of breakfasts, lunches,
and dinners, or three hundred sixty-five
times sixty-five times three, many mornings
when the toast was burned, more than anyone
can remember, for more can be contained
in an indistinct pronoun than we know,
and it always fills the room, this and that
needing to be fed too, along with the
dreaded interloper thing. Marriages
collapse on less precision than words, and
children separate, never to return
again for one reason or another,
the day their eldest died always around
the corner. Nevertheless, walking by
their shaggy lawn the other night, I heard
giddiness, the multi-noted sound of
intergenerational glee floating
out the window, and now am unable
to feel pity for them when I see the
wheelchair, replaced by compassion, even
envy, for when I laugh, I am alone.