Heeling

It’s the coat I notice first, several sizes
too big, and blue as the sea, an ocean
to drown in, and clearly not hers. It was,
I guessed, his, just two months dead, and
she, his wife for scarcely a year, stays
afloat, barely, marooned in his clothes, in
anything that keeps him close, the scent
and touch of cloth to skin. But it’s the shoes
that pierce my heart—gunboats, we called
them when I was a child—and they do look
like boats, his New Balance sneakers that
carry her, heeling, over sharp breaking waves.