Open Fields

One day you tell me there may come a time 

when you will take your life. I think instead

of us becoming blue-haired ladies, husband-

less at loose ends, nothing to do with our hands, 

too stiff to knit-and-purl, throats too parched to sing, 

and we’ll be long past driving to choir rehearsals 

or Vermont, or even the Wawa for a quick 

coffee with cream. I already know too many ways 

to die, dislike them all. The future lurches 

between us like open fields we won’t hike again. 

That day, the one when you told me, 

I took a wrong turn on the ride home, 

pulled over, already missing you, already missing 

the lupines shouldering the road, wild and blue.