Renee Williams

Mess

It’s never easy

the dishes stack up in the sink with last night’s spaghetti sauce
clinging to the plates like a wild child on a coaster ride
gripping the safety bar.

The carpet is not vacuumed, trash taken out only because it smells
with last night’s spaghetti sauce a haunting reminder of a mind
elsewhere
with someone else.

Classes are canceled at the last minute because the teacher can get away
with roaming around uptown with that guy
and going to the C.I., or the Pub, or the parking lot of Dow Lake
and making out like crazy.

Or she’ll come to class, hair refusing to stand pat in a clip
eyeliner smudged
lipstick nonexistent
but, oh, that smile on her face.

She’ll live that life for awhile
until her husband will want to know where she’s been
and why she isn’t in the building after her class
and why are the everyday chores falling by the wayside.

But that other life will pull her, grip her, possess her
and though she may try to be who’s she has promised to be
it’s only a matter of time
before she lets go of the safety bar.

Renee Williams is a retired English instructor, who has written for Guitar Digest, Alien Buddha Press and Fevers of the Mind.