Okay so I have poem here that I need to interpret including I have to discuss the issue of gender as it relates to this poem. So here's the poem
"A Place For Everything"
When my mother
spoke of sadness and widows,
my father muttered "Well, well,"
and shook the paper open
in front of his face.
Now fifty years together
isn't enough. I was wrong about her,
a widow three days who will not
sit in his easy chair.
In their lving room I wait to lift.
whatever she wants and then
as if I were a boy again wandering
at dusk I hear her voice fly
across the woods to call me home
A place for everything,
I thought was what she loved.
On their unmade bed-a torn envelope
its birthday card he must have hidden
beneath his socks, signed in x's and o's
a boy's hand, a boy's gesture.
Seventy tomorrow, she asks
for help tonight to sort suspenders,
trousers creased to their cuffs,
the two-tone shirts she chose for him
and washed and folded and set into a drawer.
The only hint are teacher gave us is "X's and O's" obviously stands for hugs and kisses, and that the birthday card the father put and hid in the drawer. Now I know it's apparently the wife's birthday the next day but I can't get beyond that surface level detail. "a widow three days":does that mean her husband died three days ago? If anyone could help me I would really appreciate it.
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