Love Story Series

 Jacqueline Jules and Husband Alan 

 

 

 

 Jacqueline and Alan on their wedding day in 1995

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Loving Again After Loss

By Jacqueline Jules

After my first husband died suddenly of a heart attack, I married a loving man who helped me raise two pre-teen sons. He died in November 2024 after 29 years of marriage. These poems tell our love story.


Perfect Husband For A Poet

Sifting the morning paper,
my husband seizes the crossword
and sits down with anticipation.
He loves the mental somersault
from clue to answer,
seeing boxed letters assemble
into interlocking units of meaning.
He will consult frayed books,
search the Web, and call friends
in his hunt to find the letters needed
to fill the last three empty spaces—
a moment of triumph
he shares with a satisfied grunt.
Words are toys for him, tools of play.
Maybe that’s why he married a poet,
a woman who spends her days
arranging and rearranging words
until all the pieces fit into a poem
she shares first with her husband,
a man who understands the pleasure
of picking just the right word.

first appeared in Imitation Fruit 
 

 

 

The Honeybee

I almost reacted. Almost
questioned how he could dare
complain about more pots to wash
when I cooked all afternoon.

Then I remembered the honeybee,
how it dies a gruesome death
when its stinger embeds
in human skin. The bee tears
a hole in its belly pulling out
the sac of venom.

A honeybee values peace.
It only stings when threatened,
not over something as petty
as who cooked and who cleaned up.

And certainly not when it could rest,
like I am right now, with feet up
on the couch, while my honey
loads the dishwasher
and scrubs every pot.

first appeared in One Art

 
 

Another Couple in our Circle

When she told me they were parting
after 33 years, I thought of all the nights,
we’ve slept side by side. All the nestled
mornings, stealing snuggles at half past six.

But she said she’d rather wake alone,
without words over who picks up
the bananas, who pays the gas bill,
who does the laundry or mows the lawn—
all the banter that bonds me to you as we
brush teeth and hair and dress for another
day of returning home to each other.

The husband she’s leaving may have
attended her father’s funeral, but he did not
drive all night to reach the hospice in time.
Her husband did not carry boxes the week
she moved Grandma to assisted living. He
had a meeting the morning she took the dog
for his final visit to the vet.

But not you. Who bought candies
for my sister after surgery. Who
traveled with us for second opinions.
Who did not disappear when my grief
made your needs invisible.

I can’t consider life without
the countless meals and music
and movies we have shared.

All the moments that make a marriage
both mundane and memorable.

And while another couple in our circle
must separate from history made together,
I pray we have the chance to make more.

first appeared in Apeiron Review 

 

 

The Road To Hana

is paved
but narrow and winding.
It takes five miles at least
to get used to the motion, to be
prepared after turning left
for a subsequent turn to the right.
At first, we counted the curves
and the one-lane bridges,
resolved to challenge
the tour book's numbers.
But as coastline careened
in and out of flowered jungle
such interest waned:
56 bridges versus 54?
400 turns to the right, 200
to the left, or 300 each way even?
How could numbers be important?
amidst colossal green
cascading down cliffs
above, below
so lush
we could feel the leaves
filling our lungs,
sustaining our life together
on this miraculous road
where one curve follows another
and taking turns has saved us
from crashing over the edge.

first appeared in Chaminade Literary Review   

 

 

 

Too Sentimental For A Trash Can

Snugly tucked
beside sweaters he seldom wears,
I find a bird’s nest of scraps from 2005.
Concert tickets used in a snowstorm.
A receipt from a diner on a drive to New York.
Gas station stops. Grocery lists.
ATM slips too faded to read—
all stashed in the drawer
like a magpie’s shining stolen treasure.

My husband is too sentimental
to use a trash can,
unable to toss an empty pill bottle
without prompting.

It makes me feel safe as a wife,
knowing
I won’t be easily discarded.

first appeared in The Write Place At the Write Time
 

 
Philemon And Baucis

When Jupiter offered
Philemon and Baucis
any divine gift desired,
the two old peasants
lifted their lined faces
like sunflowers
toward the warmth
of each other's eyes
asking only to die
when the time came
in the same moment    
forever spared
the pain of parting.

If today, decades since
we vowed to forsake
first marriages ended in sorrow,
we were offered one divine gift,
I would request                            
like Philemon and Baucis
the promise of your body    
nestled beside me
at the end of every day
until, satiated by the years
I leaned against your shoulder
for an eternal rest
forever entwined in your arms.

first appeared in River Oak Review 
 

 

 

Before You Needed a Chair in the Shower

We often spent Sunday afternoons
at scenic spots. We liked those sprawling
parks, created from old estates
with grand houses and grounds.

Now I leave you home when I drive away
with my neighbor Shelley, already widowed.

You couldn’t navigate this leaf-covered trail
with your cane. While I can still step quickly
uphill, over exposed tree roots.

Shelley, cheerful beside me, suggests a stop
after our walk at the market down the road,
the kind of place we would have visited
before your first trip to the ER.

Returning to the car,
I think of your stammering steps
from couch to table, the groaning
effort to sit back down in a chair,
and wish it wasn’t so painful
to mention how much we both miss
what we used to do together.

first appeared in Sparks of Calliope