Complete with Missing Parts
       

A stranger comes into your house, bags packed
for a long visit. She loves the word now.
The stranger sits at the kitchen table,
admonishes you because the door was wide open.
She has her eyes open, floods in. She is a retreating
god filling vacant movement, is a stone arch, is the
hangman, is a fire-brand sunrise on the final day.
She has come to stay. Stains the tea cup, breaks
the china, kills the spider plant. A call beckons—
mocking bird, starling, your animal name. A strand of
fuzz lifts fast above the space heater, hovers as music
can hover. Sun swelled purple-gray. The stranger,
now dust, lifts fast—past the window blinds, up
to the corners—a tendon between walls imprinting
its negative. Could I have done more for you?

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Copyright © 2022 Emily Wolahan All rights reserved
from Colorado Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission