The Twelfth of Never by Lauren Scharhag

Your third marriage was surely 

still in its honeymoon phase

when Johnny Mathis crooned 

about unending love.

I never knew whether to 

admire your commitment 

to finding The One 

or to shudder 

at the desperation

casting a pall 

on this time’s charms.

By the time I came along,

full of the questions children ask,

Will I be rich?

Will I be famous?

Will I fall in love?

You had an answer ready:

Sure, kid. 

On the twelfth of never.

When the last husband up and left,

people asked if you thought

he’d come back.

You told them the same.

You said it so much I thought

you’d invented the phrase.

Yet, you kept his picture

under your pillow,

and quit leaving the house

in case he returned.

Twenty-two years of

hovering by the phone,

watching the road for his car,

stopping all the clocks

at the hour of his departure. 

And then, 

three months after you died,

the letter came.

He, too, had racked up 

another divorce or two.

He was just out of prison. 

If you would just take him back,

he swore, this time, 

it would all be different.

This time, it would be forever.

It was the impossibility 

you’d always dismissed:

the bloomless bluebell,

the scentless clover,

the mute scribe.

The twelfth of never 

was finally here,

but there was no one 

to tell him that 

you weren’t.

Lauren Scharhag is the author of fourteen books, including Requiem for a Robot Dog (Cajun Mutt Press) and Languages, First and Last (Cyberwit Press). Her work has appeared in over 150 literary venues around the world. Recent honors include the Seamus Burns Creative Writing Prize, three Best of the Net nominations, and acceptance into the 2021 Antarctic Poetry Exhibition. She lives in Kansas City, MO. To learn more about her work, visit: www.laurenscharhag.blogspot.com