Dirty Linen

they never asked her
but she always knew.

from her recliner in the shadow of the neem,
she looked at their empty yard,
no sign of life, even the marauding ravens were gone.

he had brought the girl there, young, from money,
to that rickety house that had stood empty for years,
her embroidered silks and sequinned georgettes
drying away from the new cotton sheets,
on a separate line in the shade;
until months later, washed out,
like cloud sponged rainbows,
they fluttered, disinterested, in the summer sun.

then new clothes appeared
from strip mall thrift stores,
her mulmul blouse upside down with his shirt
in the rain,
their arms barely touching.

she brought a bird-feeder, the girl,
emptying her heart with tap water
into the blue plastic dish;
all her little handkerchiefs,
paisleys painted on the ends,
hand-in-hand like prayer flags
whispering to the wind for help.

until that day
when like red-fanged bats
roosting upside down,
old blue jeans,
dark grime still in the hem,
and a worn grey fleece,
the blood stain
a wound across its chest.

she wondered why the papers
called them secretive and cold,
their marriage had always hung
from wiggly wooden clips,
out where everyone could see,
out where she could watch them
from the shadow of the neem;
an empty bird feeder
knocked out of the ground
by a pitiless wind.

they never asked her
about that green print dress,
but she always knew.

 

For Poets United where the midweek prompt is “Openness”.