Suspicion

The rosebuds did not open
this year and you began to suspect.

The wind at your back
felt more like a push.

Balloons that filled the sky
like swollen swallows

saddened you because
it took such inhalation

such exhalation. You decided
to do everything

in and out, to try to copy
the breath, everything up

and down, to copy the chest.
But the cough, which catches

you by surprise each time,
gives you away and the head

scarves in the wardrobe
tell your secrets.


* * * * * * *


The Robbery

Let's say there's been a robbery.
My windows are open; I can smell my neighbor's meat loaf.
People crowd around a table and it's not mine.
I sit along among shredded paper, an empty television stand,
books scattered like pigeon feathers.
Let's say there's been a violation, a line crossed over.
My cat roams the living room howling for her brother.
I'm on the floor in a heap of cries, grasping the strings
of the rug, any sort of semblance of my former life.

And I don't know who did it. I can imagine
him breaking open my window—that first vomit of glass—
I can almost smell his leather gloves with the worn-out tips.
But what good does this imagining do me?
Every night's dream is a trip to the Boogie Man
and I'm expected to bring bundt cake.

Let's say there's been a violation. That I was a child who thought
that being tall made you smarter, safer.
That my hands weren't forced somewhere out of greed and sickness.
Let's say an event occurred where I didn't know
the culprit and if I did know him, I would soon forget.

Do I sit among the ruins for another twenty years
or do I actually begin to put things in order?
Buy a new potted plant? A new bed? Walk into
that house as though, yes, I owned it.
Yes, I would put it back together again.