(no subject)

[silverflurry.livejournal.com]

Remnant

Remember the leftover
square of carpet you
unfolded in my office thirteen
years ago, two years before

the deadly surgery? Remember
how you said it would make the clinical
white tiles "homier"?
Well, yesterday I just

glanced over at it
as I sat writing at the shiny
steel Humanities
Center desk, & I noticed

for the first time that its tawny
skin had thickened nearly
fogged with dirt:
"So have it cleaned," you said

in a not dead voice that's still
inside me somewhere,
& O then thirty years of
home unfolded

in me too, home of simmering
lamplight buried & forgotten,
& I stared hard with smarting
eyes at the tattering

remnant that's still
some sort of gold (though graying)
at the center but now
entirely ashen

at the edges.

Sandra M. Gilbert
TriQuarterly
Fall 2002