Ruin, she says, is the natural order.
You think she means the gutters choked with rot and
seedlings,
the roof losing shingles like leaves. You think
of the backyard grown to pokeweed and car parts,
the fish pond clotted with algae.
Then one night two policemen knock
on your door and show you your hands, swollen,
bloody,
show you the battered plaster
of your bedroom wall. The neighbors have been
complaining,
hold down the noise or they’ll take you in.
This is silly, you’ve already been taken in.
For years, you tell them, she’s lied about you
to your children.
This is the night you sit in the porch swing,
holding your hands in a bucket of ice.
A few cars rattle by
and drown the hum of the crickets.
The air smells like magnolia blossoms and rain.
In Tattnell Square Park
the shadows of magnolias have swallowed the tire
swings,
under a streetlamp grass cracks the tennis court.
She comes to you again, a shadow in the flower bed.
You open a loose fist.
Even now her meaning slips through your fingers
as she raises a glove full of roses.
Leave a Reply