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Alicia Cook

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The Widow in the Window

The Widow in the window watched
the sea-town home across the street
lose its weather-torn For Sale sign.

Moving vans curbed and unloaded innocuous
clues like a beige couch and an upright piano.

The Widow in the window watched
as newlyweds crossed the threshold.
She remembered her wedding day

And the severed white cake that laid frozen for the
sake of tradition in the back of her freezer.

The Widow in the window watched
her neighbors get adjusted to
the house, routine, and each other;

Saw them at dusk chase the garbage truck down the street
and bicker over little things they’d one day miss.

The Widow in the window watched
time melt into tourist season
and sobbed to sleep most of August.

One wet dawn, she delivered summer cucumbers
from her garden to the neighbors, without a note.

The Widow in the window watched
as the porch across the way was
adorned with frosty pink ribbons.

She recalled the first time her son ran a fever;
her husband soothing the caterwauling child.

The Widow in the window watched
the baby metamorphosize
into a toddler pressing her

Doorbell on Halloween with a plastic pumpkin
as grief clung to her like a shapeless white ghost sheet.

The Widow in the window watched
the world outside cyclone on as
her parents approached her front door,

manhandling bright balloons that read 38.
She had lost track of a year of her life again.

__________

The Cartomancer

The lamp above her table
drooped like a neck in prayer—
a bellflower, or a spine caught mid-regret.
It spilled amber over the cards.

She didn’t advertise.
She didn’t need to.
Mourning found her.

They all wanted something:
Forgiveness.
A sign.
Proof that love didn’t disappear
with the body.

Lucky numbers
had long since lost their charm.
Now it was:
Did she know?
Was he proud?
Did the apology get there in time?
They needed to know
death wasn’t the end of being useful.

She gave what she could—
the softened blade,
the distant shore,
a glint in the mouth
like a coin for the crossing.

Grief didn’t pass through her.
It stayed—
behind the eyes,
in the throat’s corners,
on the tongue,
like mold.

Not empathy.
Absorption.
She dreamed their dead.
She woke
with her arms aching
as if she’d been carrying them
all night.

Eventually,
she began to lie.
Because truth doesn’t comfort.

So she gave them yes:
Yes, she forgives.
Yes, he watches.
Yes, the dead still care.
Yes, yes, yes.

Then came the boy—
fifteen, maybe—
a photo of his sister,
a cracked phone
full of her voicemails.

He didn’t speak.
Just laid the $22
on the cloth
and waited.
She shuffled the deck.
Felt nothing.
That scared her.

“Does she miss me?” he asked.

She looked at him—
his grief wasn’t raw.
It had settled,
like hers.

“No,” she said, before thinking.
“That’s because she’s
still right next to you.”
And he smiled.

__________

Alicia Cook is an award-winning poet, essayist, and mental health advocate. Her bestselling poetry collections, Stuff I’ve Been Feeling Lately and Sorry I Haven’t Texted You Back, have resonated with readers worldwide, and her work continues to shed light on themes of grief, memory, addiction, and healing.

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