predicted the speed of collapse.
Hurricane after hurricane, we tuned in
to watch the floods, the cadavers
washed up on city streets.
That summer she reported
the facts and numbers
like a sentinel passing his watch.
Each night she appeared
in a new skirt and an angelic smile.

My wife and I loved her.
We took note of every change:
her haircut, the hurried words,
her loss of weight.
One night a dark-haired man
replaced her.
His voice reminded us
of an old friend,
and then, after a week without her voice,
she was back, cheery and bright
as the hope in a change of season.
An umbrella on her shoulder,
she forecast the sun and a long, dry spell.
That evening she was brilliant.
She thanked her viewers for their cards
and told us that “love takes us
to the strangest of places.”

We never saw her again.
The anchor announced her passing
in a mournful way that segued
into the statistics of suicide,
the latitude and longitude of love.

We packed our bags
and flew to Chicago
to bury her in the plot she bought.
She would never come home,
this woman of sky and clouds and rain.
She was the girl who had the world,
who had the day’s weather to report,
our girl, the girl we always had to watch.

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J. F. Connolly lives and teaches at Milton Academy. The National Foundation for The Advancement of Arts 2001 Distinguished Teacher, he has co-authored two textbooks, Poeima and Touching All Bases. His first chapbook, Among the Living, was recently published by the Comstock Review, for which he won the Jessie Bryce Niles Award. Read an interview with Mr. Connolly here.