Nobody says Lisa anymore.
In all the yuletide bustle I fear
the day will pass without remark
from those who witnessed
their December-deep union.

Everywhere evergreen returns
him to the altar and their vows,
its scent spiced with memory,
the plans of a future and a hope.
It is not my day to mark, yet I feel

how his love for her nests within
mine for him. It should be her
he calls, Come see, to the window,
pointing to the cardinal alight
on the maple’s winter-silver branch.

Instead, her ashes nourish the roots
of the tree that shoulders bird
and snow. I am the otherwise wife,
sheltering warm under his arm.
Together we witness a sudden

upthrust of flakes on a morning
without wind. Who knows what luck,
kindly and ill, brought us here?
Today this good man, who deserved
better and more, husbands us both.   

Amy Fleury is the author of two collections of poems, Beautiful Trouble and Sympathetic Magic and a chapbook, Reliquaries of the Lesser Saints. A native of Kansas, she now lives in Dunn County and is a lecturer in the English department at UW-Claire.