WHAT IF By Terri Watrous Berry

WHAT IF

What if I should have to live ─ live! ─
if your heart be stilled within its walls,
what if through our darkened door
alone my echoed footsteps come to fall?
 
How could I remove my coat
without your hand to hand it to,  
hear the kettle come to sing and
you not there to bring the other cup?
 
Or fall into our empty bed,
silence screaming in my head,
tell me now before our time is through ─
what if I should have to live past you?

Terri Watrous Berry’s work has appeared over the past thirty-five years in numerous anthologies, journals, magazines, and newspapers. Terri has been bestowed awards for poetry by Still Waters Press, Sky Blue Waters Poetry Competition, and The Poetry Society of Michigan, the state in which Terri lives. Terri was named a quarter-finalist in the Casey Shay 2015 Mary Ballard Chapbook Competition.