She stumbled out onto crumbling cement
and caught sight of a mangled array
of fading green and brown colors.
Weeds wrestled one another,
conniving their way through any
opening her backyard seemed to
spare. Vines climbed the dusty blue
siding of her disheveled home,
reaching so high they were almost
out of sight.
Thunder shook her insides
and rain pelted the dry dirt,
trying to revive the life
it once had before the drought.
She notices her reflection in the cracked window,
as well as his;
He is pacing throughout their home
and crushing his sympathy for her
behind it,
collecting family photos in a brown worn
box, but leaving the box behind as
he walks out the frail wood
door with the hinges now coming
undone.
Back to the yard.
Tall, slender, blond.
All that’s visible now through
the two leaning fence posts in
her gray blur of reality.
A house all to herself.