Often I wonder what movies, books, stories; what would they be like if they ended differently? In this poem I wrote I explore an alternate ending to Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.

There was a silence after that

You could hear the wind whistling through the pine, calling to say more.

“Pheoby,” Janie trailed off.

“Deres somethin else.”

“Lawd, another ten feet I’ll grow.”

In her mind

Janie could see

little

foot

steps

across

the

porch

as her heart grew heavy with words she knew not if she should speak.

“Ah think Ah’m havin a baby.” She blurted.

“Janie, Ah feel for yuh. But Ah think you’ll be a good mama. Yuh lost one love, but you git another one.”

Janie grinned.

Another silence fell among them, but this one felt finished. Pheoby knew her husband would be waiting, possibly worried where she was.

Pheoby hugged Janie real hard and wandered off into the darkness.

Janie went back inside, her lamp illuminating her tired face as she mounted the stairs.

She lay in her bed, thinking.

She rubbed her belly and felt the cool breeze around the room and through the windows. She let it pull the weight off of her shoulders and into the world.

A tear roll down her cheek for Tea Cake but she knew now that she would always love him. She could feel his presence now, cooing her to sleep.

She knew that he would live on in her heart and in the little beat in her rib cage.

She thought for hours, until she saw the dusty horizon peeking through her window.

Janie knew now that this was her new horizon.