RHYMES WITH GILLIAM

In the cemetery
at the gravesite
of a family that will remain nameless
(but rhymes with “kill, son”),
there is the headstone
of a wife
that said
among other things
in quotes
the following:
“I will never love another
the way that I love you.”

Next to the stone
of “rhymes with wary”
is that of a man
whose years
suggest that he is her groom
as his epitaph repeats hers
– though separated by thirty years.

The catch?
At the side
of “rhymes with Gilliam”
are the names of three other women
each with the same last name
and “beloved wife”
among their credits.

They could be his daughters
but no other men
are included
and these are the long-ago dead
before the girls
would choose to keep their daddies’ names.

“I will never love another
the way that I love you,”
he wrote,
post mortem,
and perhaps
there is some missing explanation.
Maybe he had a way
to love them all differently,
like,
“from eighteen ninety
to eighteen ninety six”
or
“during the first Roosevelt presidency,”

Certainly,
there could be some rationale
for Mister Rhymes with “Kill, son”‘s serial after-expiration philandering,
but I prefer
to think
that the dude was a dick
and
I’m glad he’s dead.