Cindy King: “I wish I didn’t have to write this poem. Tom’s dead. He was struck and killed by a 22-year-old drunk driver. That’s true. What isn’t? The way the poem characterizes my mother (though I hope to God she never reads it). She does, in fact, occasionally ask if I’m seeing anyone, but she actually means a therapist. And while I gave up on therapy—I briefly saw a grief counselor from the city’s trauma services—I continue to write poems. Poetry, I guess you could say, has been a constant in my life. However, I don’t find writing it to be particularly therapeutic. I’m not sure if I can describe how the sudden loss of your partner—the horror, loneliness, absurdity of it all—changes one’s writing. Only that it does. The fact of it is here, everywhere, in everything I do.”
