LET’S
PAINT IT GREEN
she said,
and hoisted it
from the
clattering pile,
wood legs
chipped but free
of rude
splits and a seat
bent for
good by long-gone hips.
Tuned to
teenage frequencies,
I aimed
my nose up and away
(dreading
broadcasts of our thrift)
as she
picked her way to the block,
raised
her choice one-handed
and
traded in two wrinkled squares.
Her
forearm streaked with muscle
same as
when she’d braid my hair,
tickling
fast while I held the mirror.
HALL
CLOSET
It was any other day. I came in hungry,
started telling her of my six hours.
But she sat in the living room, in the
far chair –
not the bedroom or kitchen or den –
her back straight against the pillow
like posing for a picture
and she was listening.
Not to my stories of teachers and tests,
not the rumble of the
sliding door,
the scrape of a wire hook across the rod
as I reached to hang my jacket;
she didn’t concentrate on me,
maybe something about me... She held on
to that chair and willed my silence
to better hear the cracking sounds,
tread lightly
like a traveler on late-winter ice and
no other way
round, rehearse how her voice should be
to explain
what would happen, why, before the men –
they’d probably be men –
came in with heavy feet to sound the
carpet
and there was no time left to smooth
the ragged edges. She listened hard,
propped on that stiff upholstery
while I reached into the dark without
looking,
took hold of something thin and cool and
empty,
and she listened past me and the
closet and the front door
