Letter to an Absentee Landlord
She writes letters to God
and answers don’t appear
in words, but in blue jays
and beetles, in hummingbird
beaks. She’s spinning
her wings and hungry. You are not your salary. Practice this a million times. Allergy season is three weeks away. Your father died and you still feel
What God doesn’t say is,
that pain.
father’s ceramic dalmatian.
No one wants years of soap
on a rope. She donates
to charities. She doesn’t eat
for weeks after losing
her opening act, the comedian
in the wide ties and broken body.
Now veins appear in her reflection,
lines where there were no lines
before. She fingers a prayer
on a steamy bathroom mirror.
Practice this a million times.
There’s no room for the new
towel rack, shelves spill Come here.
with pills, razors whisper:
with linens, an old headboard,
but what she really needs is sleep,
what she needs is the squawk
of a blue jay to wake her up.