SHEILA RETURNS

She always said she’d come back to me.

But as what? A monarch butterfly?

A bluebird? Or even a rose in the garden?

She kept her promise.

The day after her burial,

as I sat out on the porch,

sipping wine, watching the sunset,

there she was, buzzing inches from my arm,

order Diptera, family Culicidae,

a mosquito.

Why me? Why an insect?

My friend Joe’s wife

came back as a dog.

The bitch licks his face

as enthusiastically

as Maude used to do.

And Ernie says Maureen

is the doe he spies every afternoon

nibbling at the edge of the forest.

It’s all in the way

the creature stares at him

with those dark, ebony eyes,

a mix of inquisitive and accusing.

That’s Maureen all right.

Sheila knows how much I despise mosquitoes.

Not just for the red marks they leave.

But the diseases that hole up in their tiny bodies,

from dengue fever to West Nile virus,

equine encephalitis to malaria and chikungunya.

“Sorry Sheila,” I say aloud,

as I splatter her last attempt to get at me

with a folded-up newspaper.

Forty years we were married.

Make that forty years and one swat.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Orbis, Dalhousie Review and the Round Table. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon.