Thin Soap

The room was one big 
kidney stone we had to pass.
After you died, we stripped the bed,
lifted the mattress like Tupperware lids,
expecting the mold,
a shudder and a quick release.
But love won't leave that easily.
We tied sad tubes so many ways,
by popping corks and guzzling,
by scrubbing spot-less counters clean,
by praying to a tone-deaf god.
But pregnant grief 
drops babies on the icy tile
and some abortions
aren't approved even
by unwilling tears.
Ruination had its day --
Rome to sand and sand to sea.

We divided your china 
with rattled palms,
washed red lipstick off old cups,
crated them in bubble wrap,
promptly snapped like thinning soap.
Christmas lost its fennel scent
and seeing all your ornaments
would crash the cars in all our eyes.
We gave away your penny stash
and lived inside the empty jar.
The moon, its glossy cavity,
a slice of fruitcake 
tougher than a poisoned deer.
We painted your house a sterile white
to mask the Armageddon gloom --
to tell ourselves you weren't 
four walls that held us up.
We sold your pink geraniums
to neighbors with their distant arms,
to someone who could water them.

© Janet I. Buck

***First Published in Stirring, February 2002

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