Wedding Band, The

Hudson Review, The, Autumn 2002 by McFee, Michael

It had been slipped on so easily

so long ago,

but now he just couldn't pull it off:

the ring had shrunk

below his long-married thick knuckle

and it was stuck,

stranded around the third metacarpal,

a dull halo

choke-collaring his soon-to-be-single finger

until he tried

cooking oil and profane wrenching,

his free right hand

eventually freeing his lassoed left one,

the wedding band

bowling its gold oh across the kitchen floor

as he studied

the greasy, raw-looking, strangely naked skin

where it had been,

the base of that finger atrophied,

a broken limb

just out of its cast, pale and withered,

still circumscribed

by the thin dent that band had imprinted,

a ghostly ring

whose phantom pressure would never quite

unmarry him

no matter how hard he rubbed the girdled flesh.