A Casket Made for Three

Have you room in your heart for me?

Solace from this melancholic malady.

Bound in the bitter anguish of January. 

Respite from the smothering snow,

which consumes this existence

and dampens all love and the lamplight's glow?

There is not a bright-enough light to guide

me from this burden I bear.

From the maddening of that maternal cloak I wear,

imprisoned like a bird frozen in a cage 

in this dead house and head of woe. 

Nowhere to run, nowhere to go. 

Come home to me, happiness, 

sleep with me,

awaken in me that tropical French paradis

from those adventure books we adored 

of careless far-off wonders, 

in the Galapagos, or Italy,

in Bermuda and Hawaii. 

Beleaguer me not and trouble me no more.

Burden not my heart to suffer or plunder, 

my mind to blunder, 

and pardon my bones that surely you so seek to sunder. 

Liberate me of a society that begrudges us adequate wealth, and the happiness it once swore. 

That which they so plentiously horde

while we scrimp and save scraps, 

pennies of health, with it, only what we can afford. 

Sleep with me, my darling, my darling!

Dream of me in deep exultant luxury.

Be restless not by your duplicity. 

But there in the night on the lamplight a bird, an augury,

speaking madly to me, 

a ripped patch of night black against the ice and snow.

Talking wildly, wickedly, things the decent ought not to know. 

Lies and scandal of rumors spread 

of sins and sinners bled, 

of the quick and the dead. 

Like they in church as I sat in a pew perched at our baby's Christening. 

I saw them look at me, their bug eyes lurching, accusing me of some miscreant treachery, 

some social blunder or not being worthy of piety as they be.

Purified not by my prim posture, 

nor my performed modesty. 

My ablution, be it umcomely, ungainly,

as they sneer and snicker calling me 

and my beautiful darling "pretty," mockingly. 

Now a concalve of sinister birds, 

slurring words and accusations, 

out that pane of frozen glass.

Blackbirds with red eyes, thirteen I count,

25 eyes for one has only one that I see, 

leering, peering deep, dead into me. 

Thirteen shouting against me like a

prejudiced jury, 

as you sleep, yet not to defend me, 

dreaming of your mistress or some long-lost love you seek to avenge through me. 

That awful augury badgering, beleaguring me. 

Their sortilege from my eye -

that which portentously bleeds now, 

picked how, out from which the foul birds fly. 

I shout at them from the open sash, but no words escape for God has afflicted me.

Made me mute and thus, has damned me 

for some unknown sin that I am guilty. 

You don't love me to save me. 

We are a lost ship, lost in a cold sea, sunk long ago. 

You never have loved anyone but her, have you?  

I've torn the house apart for your love letters 

which you somewhere keep, I'm sure. 

All night searching from ceiling to floor, 

floorboards I tore where the heart of your long-lost love beats pitter-patter, pure.

You lie to me and love yourself for how it makes you feel to pretend to love someone else,

obliged, but alas, not me! 

Lowly, not me, not even pleasantly, 

not as you once did, truly, deeply. 

You'd love me the same dead or alive, 

your affection unchanged by the worms in my eyes,

buried and rotting in the cemetery where you would bring me flowers that wilt and decay, 

dutifully the widower you're obliged to play.

The only difference being we shan't argue or dine together anymore,

or that I no longer wait for you to come,

to come through my door. 

And after a reasonable time to grieve, 

in you'd move that waiting whore,

who like those foul birds prefer dead prey

to pick and pluck their bones. 

That mysterious mistress who lurks in the shadows and just behind the locked door,

eyeing us through the keyhole, 

spying as we make love, 

as our daughter sleeps in her cradle.

And she weeps tears in her birdly burden forlorn that a mistress bears because of the torment they sew in the hopeless tragedy of their affairs.

She is one of them on the lamplight I'm certain that I saw before. 

But she changes demonic forms -

to a bird, to a woman, to a rat that scurries about the cold nursery floor awaiting an opportunity to feast, 

or a drop of mother's milk, at least. 

Never to leave us to our own!

Never to surcease from that which she never naturally bore as I labored and bore you no more a woman could have bore!

Twice my body for you, and our child, stretched and tore! 

Husband, dear husband, I implore, 

sleep and less your troubles be, sleep and float for all eternity.

I forgive you, of your negligence and infidelity. 

Forgive me of my madness that comes with dark 

when the clock strikes that hour of my torment, 

when I abhor all that terrorizes and traduces me 

by the cold winter that dampens all love and light

and imprisons me in its infinite melancholy,

in its sad, sadistic delight. 

You kiss me and say, goodbye, goodnight, routinely, 

as though you are talking to a tree. 

Goodnight, my love. Goodnight to you.

Revolver shoot true and through the heart and from which, through that hole flee!

Lift you ghost, husband, do not languish! 

Hurry! Hurry from this bothersome world of cold and tormented anguish! 

For you are free!

Find your peace in that French paradis,

Free of sin where waves crash over the hot sand,

Lapping the shore and your naked feet 

as you smile at our beautiful one who frolics in the froth and foam, 

collecting seashells on that celstial vacation, 

so far from pain, so far from home. 

The loudness of the revolver like thunder spits, and done is the deed that cannot be undone. 

Quickly it separates soul from life, 

to death do we part, but part not ever from me, thy loving wife. 

Your eyes open as though looking at the glorious stairway you ascend.

I shall leave them open, so you might see our daughter that shall follow you into eternity

in the glory of Our Father, Our Lord, who art thou in Heaven. 

And by the bedside, where our beautiful one was startled awake

lies her sweet head looking for comfort in my eyes, 

in big blue eyes, searching for me, wide awake,

consoled by her favorite rhyme in verse.

Oh, my dear beautiful one, my agony I cannot reverse.

I'm sorry, so sorry to be so terse, 

and I apologize for the temporary pain 

and that I never got to teach you the piano. 

Shhh! Shhh! Shhhhhhh!

Mommy's little beautiful star sweeper. 

Sleep, my love, so that I may deliver you to your Lord and keeper

and free you of a life of melancholy and sorrow, 

you knew not today but would anguish in tomorrow.

Pass by way of that most gentle reaper, 

ferrying you over Styx as you sleep ever deeper. 

We all shall meet again in paradis

where we are meant to be, 

and shall not live a life between of agony,

where the angels sing and your father happily waits for thee. 

Having delivered two of three,

two shots crashed and I frantically awoke from my insanity

temporarily to see that demonic malady broke. 

The damage of a fractured mind lost some time ago,

buried in my infected woe as life through that pane of glass in a foot of January snow.

It festered so terribly from that first inkling of sadness when I birthed her, my angel, no! 

My beautiful one, no! No! No! 

What have I done, that misery has done, that which cannot be undone, 

that fiery demon that came over and molested me. 

And those blackbirds caw the accuracy of their prohetic augury. 

Death, you cannot flee. 

That mistress shifts to the mournful black maiden as she passes over me in a line of neighbors and mourners, 

tearfully mocking me in their perfidy,

I, yet to be free, yet to join my beloved 'neath the palm in that long-promised Paradis.

Lying in a casket, woefully, a casket made for three. 

*******

This is the saddest photograph I've ever seen in  my life and I am drawn to it and their story strongly. This poem I drafted today for Emil, Mary and Anna Keller (pictured) who mental illness sorrowfully stole from this life on January 25, 1895. 

The Keller family immigrated to the US from Zurich, Switzerland only 5 years before. Emil was a renowned gardner and worked in a greenhouse overnight and just before he left for work at about 8:30pm, he kissed his wife goodbye. As he did, she shot him in the heart with a revolver. Neighbors heard the gunshot and Emil cry for help and hurriedly responded, but not before she shot the baby, whose clothes caught fire due to the gunshot, before turning the gun on herself. Anna, the infant daughter, with a bullet lodged in her lung, died the next day in a nearby children's hospital. Her mother's shot had narrowly missed her heart. 

Mary died around midnight that night in a local funeral home. She had been hospitalized for mental health issues previously, spending four months in a hospital and they had lost an infant baby years earlier, from which she never recovered. Although she was beautiful and known as "the perfect lady" by most, a highly educated musician and talented piano player, she was also known as insane. This picture haunted me from the monent I saw it on Friday. All weekend it has been ruminating in my head and I felt compelled to address it somehow. I will post their obituary and a better account of the grisly murder in the comments. When I wrote the poem, I hadn't yet read the account. I knew nothing about her playing piano, yet, for some reason, I wrote that she apologized for not teaching her daughter to play the piano. 

Rest in peace, husband and wife, and beautiful one. I hope this is a fitting tribute and you all have the peace you so richly deserve. "Paradis/par-a-dee/ (silent s)" is French for "Heaven." The repetition of the "E" rhyme, of course, was intentional, meant for melody and to emphasize the "me," the poem being written in the perspective of Mary Keller, the guilty party. Rhyming poetry is not my usual thing, but melody is important sometimes and it sounds more eloquent and flows much nicer than that which doesn't. I will be haunted by this photograph forever. The mortician rested Mary's head on Emil's head so to conceal the fatal gunshot wound.