Letter to My First Husband
A poem by guest writer Linda McCauley Freeman
Have you forgotten? The young you and me twisted and entwined
in the hatch of Tristan’s car on the way to the Danbury Fair?
All remnants destroyed now, the fairground replaced
by a shopping mall, me replaced by a younger wife,
my bridesmaid’s little sister, who made you stop speaking to me—
perhaps because I had left you, not the other way around,
although we both were forever leaving from the start. I lost
not only your friendship, but the couple who became your in-laws,
a closeness I couldn’t imagine when the four of us were best friends.
Do you ever get confused? Sometimes, I recall doing something
or going somewhere and can’t remember which husband I did it with.
Do you ever pause when picking up fishing tackle and think about
all the fish you brought home to me, that you’ve brought home to her,
now, what, twenty years?
Once on a whim I passed your mother’s house in Yonkers
and pulled into the driveway determined to say hello.
But the garage door opened and a young woman drove out
and stared at me. Panicked, I twirled my finger in the air
to indicate I was turning around. She must have been your daughter,
the child you refused to have with me. How ironic then, you who said no
for years of me waiting, hoping, longing for you to say yes,
and there she is and here I am. Are you happy now
with this no-longer-new wife and child? Are you finally happy
with yourself?
When I stop by my neighbor’s yard to pick up the plants he has divided,
he tells me what a nice guy you are and that you took him fishing.
For a moment I am confused, then I recall he is the chiropractor
I found for you all those years ago. Who knew we’d be neighbors?
I don’t tell him how much I would love to see you, how I never
turned to not caring, how angry I am that your wife told you
to stop talking to me, that you listened, that I understand, that I don’t.
Linda McCauley Freeman is the author of the forthcoming full-length poetry collection The Marriage Manual (Backroom Window Press, 2024) and The Family Plot: Poems (Backroom Window Press, 2022) and has been widely published in international journals, including in a Chinese translation. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been the featured U.S. poet in The Poet Magazine and won Grand Prize in StoriArts’ Maya Angelou poetry contest. Lines from her poem Made in America were selected by Kwame Alexander to use in his Civil Community Poem and are on display at the Civil Rights Memorial Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. She has an MFA from Bennington College and is the former poet-in-residence of the Putnam Arts Council. She lives in the Hudson Valley, NY, where she is a swing dance teacher and a yoga instructor. Follow her at her website.
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 | A guest post by
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"Letter to My First Husband" is contained in my forthcoming book: The Marriage Manual: Poems (Backroom Window Press, 2024). Advance praise for the book: To read McCauley Freeman’s The Marriage Manual is to follow an honest inquiry wrought deftly over fifty poems. Never does this collection sink into sour, nor does it soar too sweetly. There’s a light touch that rings like a small bell, gently. The book opens with the query, “Why did we believe?” We’re drawn to ask ourselves what the promise of lifelong love is. Or isn’t. The complications of the narrator’s first marriage reveal themselves in lines of nestled warmth, “In the crook of your arm, /entrapped.” This pairing of affection and pain squeezes, like the wife who “couldn’t fit/into the smaller places anymore.” When the author finds her second husband, a quiet intimacy unfolds, “you paused/to untangle me, your fingers/brushing softly against my face”. We never doubt these poems; their knotted beauty lingers. Read The Marriage Manual and enter love in all its incarnations.
Lovely.