A monument of unwashed dishes
has once again risen in the sink an archaeological record of what everyone's eaten this week so she grabs a scrub pad twists on the hot water and leans into the steam wiping condensation from the window she can see the ancient widower across the street plundering neighbors' recycling bins recently bereaved, the widower wears his dead wife's sunhat mashed onto his too-large head he is tall and scarecrow-like his clothes look scavenged from trash and the wrecked little sunhat with cloth flower pinned to its brim looks comical on him he seems a ravaged tree badly impersonating a human while above him a huge eucalyptus rustles with squirrels she clatters spoons into the drying rack and wonders why her secrets have lately gained the power of myth like what happened long ago in a tent on an island in a lake filled with sunfish and water snakes the rusty but functional canoe overturned on the beach oars stashed underneath her bathing suit had a flounced skirt that's how young she was a fondle and a squirt and it was over it's almost not worth scrambling eggs if they're going to stick to the pan so bad is it too early for a glass of booze? she thinks a quick spritz of endorphins would hit the spot right now after the initial vodka sip she believes she could live a different kind of life entirely perhaps in a tent? could she taste the happiness of saints in their dark, unwashed garments living only for herself, god as her alibi? a saint's joy dry and crumbly as a handful of stale cake? children toss a frisbee across a parched lawn as streetlights waver on and a girl and a dog play under a picnic table while the mother reads her Sunday paper on the stoop by porchlight one sister walks outside holding a spatula and says, "how can anyone take you seriously with that frosted blue eyeshadow?" and they laugh she wipes coffee grounds off the counter with a towel that's had its personality bleached away the sun plummets in runny pastels who knew shame was such a large part of growing older as though through lack of vigilance you'd slid into ruin as though drunk in front of everyone you'd fallen down a flight of stairs these endless ill-fitting versions of womanhood... should she envision herself as something else? a flower full of fluorescing nectar? though aren't those mostly deathtraps for insects? the green afro of the orange tree studded with tiny white blossoms might be nice to be or maybe a fleet, arboreal creature who can smell the age and relative health of each leaf before eating it a feminine epic lives in her under wraps like a field of sheet-draped statues fugitive, incognito, and when some of her ancestors that chorus of ghost-women finally take her hand and smooth her hair, they smile in sympathy as the last of her mother's wineglasses cracks against the scoured pit of the sink as the cypress tree sways perilously when an owl lights on its pinnacle she takes potatoes from the bin and lights the oven her guts grumble reminding her of the sloshing bag of viscera she is when you love someone is it your duty to tell them? shouldn't you keep those revelations to yourself? so far, her strategy has been to construct a hive of silence to tuck honey away where no one will find it in residual moments of the day as the last flaming swipes of orange abandon the sky to grey