The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Auguries & Divinations by Heather Treseler

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First Grief

Late to love, later still to marriage,
they assumed little, having foraged
for each other. So even as the signs

seemed clear and Sophia's courses
stopped, they knew the danger
in forecasts, whims of wind

and weather, and spoke little
of their gathered hope. So when
she slipped from the stalwart arm

of her beloved and fell hard against
the frozen face of Concord River,
she tried not to regard the basket

of blood as more than an accident.
A freak fall, a first loss demanding
of them more tenderness—and stern

reminder, in newlywed bliss,
of the dark currents that swell
and course beneath gray ice, how

a sudden crack in winter's river
devours as quick as any storied
tragedy. What had begun in

a sweet flood of four limbs,
pulsing blood, and a narrow
bed, swum as if black water.

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