Tell Me About Him by Jacqueline Jules

That’s what she said.

Not “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Or “That must have been so hard.”

Instead, she asked me
to describe the person
he was before he became
someone to be sorry about.

It made me blink.
I was so used to nodding my head,
mumbling a platitude in return.

“He had my mother’s eyes,”
I offered softly. “Grayish blue
with flecks of green.”

“Lovely,” she said, touching my arm,
giving me permission to say
he coached Little League in the spring,
and cooked outside on an old grill
that came with the rented house
he shared with three college buddies.

“So he loved baseball?” she asked.

“And hockey,” I answered.
“We used to watch games together.”

“You must miss him,” she said.

I do.



Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021), Itzhak Perlman's Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press, and Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember (Bushel & Peck, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications. Visit her online at www.jacquelinejules.com