For weeks, you dug a trench around dead stumps,
the crepe myrtle trees in your flower bed,
moving the soft earth in buckets,
sawing through thicker buttress roots by hand,
blistering your palm on a spade,
scooping around twisted gnarls
searching for the underneath,
the point you could rock the base of the trunk
in its hole and roll it away to the curb.
“The roots run wide not deep” you repeated.
It is the same way you dug my heart
from your chest and out of your life,
perhaps to plant the tulips you loved more.

Previously published in Merion West