Charlotte Tanner
Fiction Editor
I return to the house I called home,
With a rock in my gut,
And I leave my rose-colored glasses in the car.
Inside, I find dust and the means of a man,
Who lives alone.
And the man asks me a question.
“Why doesn’t she love me?”
There is a rock in his gut too,
Accompanied by a seed of bitterness,
It is small. But,
If I do not control myself,
I will water the seed.
But the longer I remain in the house,
The harder it becomes.
For I find cobwebs in the corners of their old room.
I find love notes from her that are beginning to peel from his mirror.
I find empty drawers that were once full of the softness of a woman.
I find barren shelves that were once filled with knowledge.
I find the open Word of God from a man seeking something more.
I find letters from the woman’s daughters that she left behind,
Perhaps she did not care to keep them?
I find the dip of the man in the mattress of the youngest’s room,
It is the only bed in the house.
I find a pile of mail with her name on it,
Ready to be returned.
But I do not find what I imagine,
A family.