These days I sit and do the crossword on my own.
I make the ritual comments,
look over at your empty chair
and smile, the way we always did.
“Too easy!” when we raced through the first one.
“It’s always so predictable.”
(Life’s not, you know.)

And frown in consternation as we did the ‘hard’.
“Unfair!” we’d say, when nutting out some clue
so devious in obscurity that one could scarce believe it.
“Unfair!”
(But life’s like that, you know.)

Yet when, some days, no matter how I try
I still can’t find the answer,
I simply hear again your words, my love:
“Tomorrow we’ll see what it was.”