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Ever After

By Joyce Sutphen b. 1949 Joyce Sutphen

What am I to you now that you are no

longer what you used to be to me?

Who are we to each other now that

there is no us, now that what we once

were is divided into me and you

who are not one but two separate and

unrelated persons except for that ex-

that goes in front of the words

that used to mean me, used to mean

you, words we rarely used (husband, wife)

as when we once posed (so young and helpless)

with our hands (yours, mine) clasped on the knife

that was sinking into the tall white cake.

All that sweetness, the layers of one thing

and then another, and then one thing again.

Source: Poetry (February 2003).

Biography

Joyce Sutphen grew up on a farm in Minnesota. She earned a PhD in Renaissance drama from the University of Minnesota, and has taught British literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota. Her first collection of poems, Straight Out of View (1995), won the Barnard Women’s Poets Prize. Subsequent collections include Coming Back to the Body (2000), a Minnesota Book Award finalist, Naming the . . .

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