Greta Bolger is a dedicated epistolarian, who still maintains postal correspondence with old friends, along with a lifetime archive of letters. Her poems and prose have appeared in The Chimaera, Thema, Third Coast, The Mom Egg, Juice Box, and other print and online journals.

Dear Husband Number One, (May 20, 2010. Issue 17.)

You were my boyfriend longer than my husband,
married just a year and a month, when I was still
too young to know what having a husband meant

and truthfully, I never really liked you –
mean-spirited and small-minded as you were,

yet you continue to show up in my dreams,
transformed, big-hearted and sweet-smelling,
handsome as you were in ninth grade
and then never again, your thumb gone to the automakers,

your face gone to dissipation and disappointment,
your muscles gone to waste, and me long gone
into a real marriage that erased our past and drew me whole.

Still, in my dreams you’re so humble and sincere,
so appealing in your desire for a me who never was,
that I wake confused, next to the man who’s been
so true that in his absence I could not have dreamed at all.

Goodbye, good luck, good riddance.

Your child-bride