Sunday Scribblings: Lost

This week's theme at Sunday Scribblings: lost. Here's my take on the prompt.

The Lost One

comes back to her
in the month of his thirty-eighth
birthday, sometime in April
when the tiny white crosses
of the dogwoods had glowed
ghost-like at dusk
and she had felt him coming

too early for more
than a minute's worth
of breath and a sprinkling
of holy water, his name. Gasp
of the nun, sign of the cross.
Emptyhanded

she had returned to her kitchen,
rubbed the windows clean of streaks
to better watch her three boys outside
who never thought to ask
where
or why
or even to notice the swell of her belly
gone back to ribs

and now he would be years older
than she was then, a sweet balding man
who, whistling, comes
through the front door with a kiss
on the cheek and a single daffodil.

—Sarah Cummins Small, copyright 2009