Open House

When you’re showing them the house

and you get to the bathroom

and you’re thinking, “I thought I had

that faucet fixed”

and maybe you see a little stain in the toilet,

and the bed made months ago smells

a little like sweaty fish

and you say to someone,

“this is where we slept for 30 years and

sometimes woke up out of our dreams

making unprovoked love.”

And downstairs in the kitchen

You’ll tell them about

the night you came at me drunk

with the butcher knife saying

“I’m going to kill you”

and I dared you to kill me

and we wound up on the floor together

naked, shaking, puking.

You know that silence that came in

when the children left?

Don’t let them hear it.

And whatever you do,

don’t let them see the hole I had to spackle

when the Redskins lost in ‘84.

But take them down to the garden

where you worked in painter’s pants

and one time I saw you brushing dirt

from the brow of a bulb with a finger

dabbed with the sacrament of mud.

And now, as you’re waving them goodbye

and you’re walking back along the lawn

where we sat in the shade of summer watching the kids

I remember a plane passing overhead

and I looked up and caught you thinking
there'll be no end to this.