Poem

Into Inevitability

I hung our

sweaters and socks

on the clothes line in the backyard

so that we could smell like sunshine and breeze.

In the front of our house there was a red metal mailbox,

smiling at us with envelop teeth

full of words proving our love.

A white picket fence

separated us from the rest of the world,

and the smell of sweet, apple crumble

wafted out of windows

and into our summer days.

But soon a wind blew in,

and brought with it the winter

and I forgot to bring

our button downs and bed sheets

back inside to protect us

from the thunder and hail.

The metal mailbox slowly began to rust itself shut

and the picket fence turned brown

as its paint ran down with the rain

and turned the green living grass white.

Now the only smell that ever escaped the windows

was the smell of smoke

from forgotten suppers,

as we became preoccupied with our anger

and let it seep into every crevice and corner.

Soon our perfect, pretty house became our prison

and we locked ourselves inside the cage,

making the bars out of love

and molding them together with anger.

Angry that we’d let ourselves become

the same person with the same life,

and the closeness we had once marveled in

became hated.

We pushed each other away to try and become closer,

but we didn’t know if the pushing was

helping or hurting

so we stopped.

And through it all

the clothes on the line became so windblown and tattered

they disintegrated,

and only rags hung in their places.

The mailbox closed itself completely

so that a brown hunk of metal was the only reminder

of the vowels and consonants that had once passed through its lips.

The fence began to crumble

so we cut it into firewood

to feed to the flames that had sparked from our charred, burning food.

As the fire devoured us whole

I looked out the window

and saw millions of other homes

exactly like ours

go up in smoke,

and that was the real tragedy.

-Me