A Buyer’s Market
I felt you break. A home invasion. The day I found out I was pregnant, I cried. He smiled. I called my mothers. He said, I knew it would happen. Chicago winds continued. Winter was on its way. I began walking. Winter came to my front door. I answered it without shoes. A dress. A belly full of someone else.
A home inside a home. I am now, a home as I marvel at what two body’s, working full time has extended. A home. Castle in the village. Building in the middle of Legoland. Home on the south side.
My body from Memphis. My body have worked in the jails, the facilities for kids, the programs for adults who don’t have. His body have done what the old people say to do, a state job with benefits. I take a deep breath and walk without socks.
In the mirror I watch my body build itself into a sturdy home. One that has windows and doors. One that carries someone’s bones, teeth, feet, and shoulders. I hear this body as it settles, adjusting to the foundation.
The cracking of the once siding. The crumbling of bricks. I await the visitor who is no longer kind and small as a strawberry. Her eyelashes now long, her not yet learned manners allow her permission to kick her home’s foundation, punch it, flip in it, feet off the floor.
Body. A Monday miracle. I praise you. Give you what you want. Rolled sweet bread from Cottage Grove. Bowls of greens, just the right broccoli, a cheese pizza. I talk to you at night as I notice who you are now. Another person.
Without warning you set the traps. Turn on the alarm. Waiting any second to ring, explode, place the neighborhood watch sign in the window. I watch you from the screen door. The way you’ve slowed down.
Just how many acres you can afford? How much square footage you will take up? If you will walk through or around the grass. Do you jump gates and enter the side door?
Never imagining I could afford a home built from the ground up. I am a new development. Updated. Renovated. There is someone who has placed their bid.
She wins. Completes a tour. Hires an inspector. I check out, I’m livable.
She pays her closing cost. Says, moving in, in October. Hires a mover. Swims in my home.
At night I treat her to peach ice cream and root beer. As my body settles into its foundation, I await the demolition arriving.
From the Lake of My Mother
She came to see the damage
that had been done to my body
the evident entrapment
a flagpole construction
Seven weeks postpartum, my mother visited, to see
all had been done.
Following birth my body became a trampoline
no longer iron as it once was
instead it bends, shatters
a pull of elastic
I once was a boat
a fisherman’s boat
immaculate, equipped, sturdy.
I was all of this, and more, until
my baby girl pushed her way
through the canal
her feet doggy paddling
a sail through the bay
my body, a flood state of emergency
a fisherman’s boat, wrecked.
