By the end of this, I'll have remembered his name, the elderly guy in the group therapy class at Holly Hospital, who, one session at a time, told us of his wife dying piecemeal from cancer, flesh
after flesh, a kidney here, a lung there, spleen, uterus, eyeball. He had the look of someone who was seeing again what wasn't there to see anymore. Sad, sad, I was thinking, when he'd finish. And then
he'd take her up again, stories about how happy they were when they were younger, how all the kids--they're grownnow, of course--are cancer-free. What was his name? For the life
of me I can't recall, but remember sitting across from him as he stared in to the center of our circle, focused on what used to be as though we were all
able to see it, too. I can relate to that: I'm in for a broken heart. I know what you're thinking; let me explain. I fell into the truest kind of love, complete with mutual You changed my life and What do you thinkbrought us together? and I've never felt this way before. All the cliches that make life worth living
and love worth giving and all that. So I got pretty looped on sangria one night --her best friend's there, sitting across from me at my Beloved's kitchen table and going on about her husband. I point out that for someone who says she's in love she sure complains a lot about it. Boom. So I take a little guff and decide to walk out. My girl's begging me not to
split--I've had enough. I don't want to talk anymore. I don't want to see them. One day passes and no apologies from them. Nada. The day after that I receive a Dear John, written on notebook paper. Notebook paper. I'm telling this in group,
staring at his wife, now dead again, in the navel of the circle. I look up and stop. They're staring at me and I think, My problem doesn't rate here. It's nothing compared to what's-his-name's and the cocaine
addict's and the pothead's (fourteen thousand bucks a year on grass) and Ann's--her name's Ann, I remember--sexual abuse when she was a toddler, and Pat's depression because I'mnot feminine anymore, and Dee's boozing and someone else's job
-loss. I'm not good enough for these people because I got off easy. I profane them. They're sacred to my secular. So the guy's back at it about his wife. Gale, one of the social workers asks me, How doyou feel about ____'s story? I say, Son of a bitch, I thought I had problems. What doesthat mean, exactly?--the other young counselor probes me. I mean, I'm in the presence of something so powerful that shows itself through ____'s misfortunes that I don't really know what the hell to say. I mean, it's awe-inspiring. It's God,
somehow. Nobody speaks. What does someone else think about what Gale's just suggested? Nobody answers. I mean (I say), take my case: I thought it was a holy thing, even if it was so carnal, but this, this is tragic proof of something deeper. So you're comparing yourpain to his? asks Suzy Counselor. No, I say. Not that --I just mean that his goes to the marrow
and all I got is a minor fracture. You mean that his pain is more beautiful or nobler or better in some way No, I reply. Well, yes. It doesn't have mine's cheapness about it. It's a purer ache. The old guy's still gazing at the center. Ivan, dammit--the son of a bitch's
name is Ivan.What do you think, Ivan? asks Barbie Counselor. I think thatpain is pain, he says. He looks at me. Why does he look at me like that? I'm not cancer.
Bio: Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Ohio Journal, Descant, Poem, Adirondack Review, Coe Review, Worcester Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Arkansas Review, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008). He has taught university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.