Set for demolition, and empty for God knows how long, the house lists like a rowboat that’s taken on water. Windows gauzed with dust and grief refuse to look out toward the road, where two vultures balance on a live utility pole, lifting one foot at a time until their wings settle. Dear leasehold of our mother’s mother’s mother, when did your front porch unstitch from its original seam, and why was there no selvedge to save you from unraveling? How did your middle of nowhere turn to somewhere? Out back, fields tended for the landlord’s profit are overrun with whiskey grass, waiting on excavators and a new name, Palmetto Rose Estates. From fronds and grasses, our grandmothers wove baskets to lay their infants in the shade. They shouldered hoes, their men long gone to drink, disease, and arguments, no river near enough back then, not yet, not yet, to float a crying baby past a rich man’s daughter.
Michele Sharpe, a poet and essayist, is also a high school dropout, hepatitis C survivor, adoptee, and former trial attorney. Her essays appear in venues including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Poets & Writers. Poems are recently published or forthcoming in Sweet, The Mom Egg Review, Rogue Agent, and Salamander. She lives in North Florida.
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Love this one