I am tired tonight for no particular reason. Got up early to go in and do some work, so maybe that’s why I’m dragging (and by early I mean 7:30. It is summer after all). So allow me to post a poem and shuffle off to bed, if you will.

This poem was inspired by the title phrase, which I overheard someone saying on her cell phone in a Nordstrom’s restroom. I love it when people talk on their cell phones while they are in the stall (Oooh that reminds me of this awesomely disgusting behavior my friend and I witnessed in a movie theater restroom one time…I’ll wait to share that story though).

At Least She Got the House

She cleans the backyard pond,
scummed over
from the broken pump
he didn’t notice,

the umbrella palm
he planted grown so high
the tips
of each stalk dip

down into the sticky water.
Every broken doorknob,
rot of wood, defective fixture

bore his name, and she blamed
him each spring
while hacking
the ginger plants
running wild

against the crumbling slats
of their fence. He had loved
to build but not care for things,

and she still thinks of him
each time
she hears the steady
drum-drop
of a bathroom faucet,

or a fence slat
loosens, tipping
over in the yard,
like another little death.