For His First Wife

para Adriana

The winter after he left, my mother
took me to Sanibel Island.
Selena was four. Offshore —
black blurs of dolphins.
Every afternoon I walked
down the long beach, reconciling,
noticed no one.
At a sandbar we disturbed pelicans
to collect sand dollars,
wrapped them in tissue to take home
to Brooklyn,
you were dying in Manhattan.

***

You, beautiful,
fierce and thin, told me once
I was better suited for him.
One night half-asleep he said,
Que sueñes con los angelitos,
the only time he confused me with you
in bed.

***

I hear your voice the day you called
“I have gossip!
It’s about me.”
Telling the second wife
you were in love again, a woman.

***

Years before, when you came to get the rest of your clothes,
retrieved your cats, from the apartment you’d left
and I’d moved into
— he found it too rough, being alone —
picking my underwear out of the dryer
you said to him,
“I’d never wear these.”
I never learned why.

***

Months later, in the tub, letting out
the slow water, I reached deep into the clogged drain,
unearthed a wet clot—

your long black hair

kept coming and coming out
of that drain
slippery and dark.