They came at dawn,
when bread was cooling
on the sill.The king’s guard filled the doorway,
iron smelling of cold.
They bound her husband’s wrists
as one gathers wheat,
efficient, practiced.He said his name,
then said it again,
as if repetition
could anchor him
to the room.She folded to the floor,
a cloak emptied of its body.
The sound she made
had no language left in it.Someone said the king required order.
Someone said the roads must be kept clean.But the man’s hands
knew the weight of apples,
the pull of soil,
the years of opening the same gate
morning after morning.
They had never learned
how to be taken.When the guards were gone,
she wept into the stone floor,
tears darkening it
the way rain finds old dust.
Moisture crept where he had stood,
seeping into the house itself,
as if even the walls
were asking
to bring him back.
© 2025 Lyman Ditson