The Curator

If you came back even now, you’d feel at home:
in seven years nothing’s been rearranged.
Oh, the great room’s been retiled, but
the furniture’s the stuff we chose together
in a giddy, supple age.
We held hands as we shopped,
and everything was a bargain.
Hard to believe that pie-crust table
cost only fifty dollars, the leather love-seat
a hundred. The garage-sale copper colander
hugs the pegboard hook where you hung it
the day we settled in.
You made pasta that first night, and
we had an electrical fire. How we
laughed at the contractor’s folly—imagine hiring
high-school kids to handle the wiring!—
laughed even harder at The Money Pit.
It’s still in the video tower; can’t
watch it anymore, but I dust it twice a year,
then align its spine with the others.
To shift things doesn’t do, for
something holds the house we shared in tension,
or maybe it’s enchantment.
The spell was cast when you drove away,
and I alone was left no Sleeping Beauty.
You’d recognize me, surely,
next these familiar fixtures,
but should you happen upon me
in any bed besides our rosewood own,
you’d be hard pressed to discover in that cipher,
round its red, wringing entrails shrimp-like curled,
the vestigial virgin who helped you build it all,
who gaily extinguished the augural flames
while you dialed 911, then
went to hanging etchings on the walls.

Joy A. Farmer