poetry365:

I came back from the funeral and crawled
around the apartment, crying hard,
searching for my wife’s hair.
For two months got them from the drain,
from the vacuum cleaner, under the refrigerator,
and off the clothes in the closet.
But after other Japanese women came,
there was no way to be sure which were
hers, and I stopped. A year later,
repotting Michiko’s avocado, I find
a long black hair tangled in the dirt.

I remember reading this poem after a summer in the Philippines, where I spent a decent amount of time being disgusted with the foreign men obviously picking up their mail order brides.  The line about “other Japanese women” got to me, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he loved Michiko for Michiko, or for her race.