Still

I still wake up trembling
scurry to the window to make sure
that the spaces between the stars
still spell my name.

How to Tell If He/She Is THE ONE

As my husband and I opened up a web browser a few minutes ago, an article on our homepage caught my eye. It was one of those "How to Tell If He/She Is The One" articles that offer useless advice to eager American consumers of useless advice. We clicked on the link to the article for fun - I told Husband I wanted to make sure I had made the right choice. The author of the article was promoting his new book about how to tell if he or she is "The One." We both agreed that if a person goes out and purchases a book about "how to tell" and actually reads all 200 pages, then he/she is definitely not The One. Just saying.

Widow's House

We bought the house in February,

Allowed it to hibernate until May,

And then we began our assault.

We stripped the house of silly relics:

Turquoise carpet and pink toilet,

Big blue sink, plastic chandelier,

Five layers of floral wallpaper –

One for each decade she had loved her home –

Even her hedge of holly bushes had to go.

Our coarse hands pulled at her delicate ruffled curtains;

With glee we threw each remaining piece of her life into the dumpster

To make space for ours.

And when I discarded the last piece of pink tile, I paused,

And wondered if she’d have cried to see

The kitchen where she’d made her famous pork chops,

The big blue tub where she’d drawn bubble baths for her only child, a boy,

The hearth her husband had designed himself,

All supplanted by our notions of modern superiority.

I sighed in recognition that one day our revisions, too,

Would need “remodeling.”