Ghost Wife

This is a draft of a poem I wrote on the plane ride home from AWP.  It's based on story my friend Susan told me and an assignment to play with rhyme schemes. 

Ghost Wife

She says – tell it to unravel me – years
caught like dust mites sparkling in air.
How, long ago, a willow of a girl
stood watch from a pile of rubble
her town decimated before her
as if her history had been folded down.

How her husband, who parked his blue Chevy
at the edge of town walked slowly in
past blackened eyes of shattered windows,
uprooted arcs of snapped trees, before
the houses and schools blurred unrecognizably.

Until he found her and their bodies wove
together like an epicenter.  Years built
upon years and on it they built a paper house
lit at its center by the dull red glow of a Tiffany
lamp they’d scavenged from a lost house.

She says – tell it to pull me together --
How, long ago, a willow of a girl
lay buried beneath a pile of rubble
her town decimated around her
her  husband walking from the edge of town
toward the epicenter of his grief.