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Living Together
Old Mrs. Slatterfield paces her yard
in a pink bathrobe. She is all stomach
and frown. She looks like a dyed Easter chick,
pointing her toes in slick, shiny grass.
Some days she is more like a barge,
poling the boat of her body
across the low tide of her porch,
then setting sail in a paisley house dress
for the mailbox at the side of the road.
I watch her because she is there
living alone with her middle-aged son.
They sit on the porch in the evenings
courting the breeze, smoking cigarettes,
their voices filtering the darkness
like stirred leaves.
I watch her because she watches me,
living alone in this house with my lover.
Perhaps she’s displeased by the untended yard,
the kudzu curling the posts of my porch.
In two years
she only calls to me once:
You the same girl been living there
all this time?
I might have given her a bowl
of wild roses, dried petals
for a sachet to scent her clothes.
She might have taught me
pie crust, a way of pruning shrubs.
Instead we are outlaws
in our own neighborhoods
and in our hearts
because we have what we wanted.
When she heads for Ingles in her gold Malibu,
we both look toward the Baptist Church
on the corner, and do not wave.
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