Fault Lines in the Land of Oz

The attachment I once had to the things decorating our home
is quite suddenly, gone.

Today, I realized if flames found
the lovely juicer your parents gave us one year for Christmas,
that we used just twice, I definitely wouldn't weep.
I would probably forget we even owned a juicer
by the time I finished mourning the books
and the photographs. Quick, even that recovery:
I could do without the constant dusting of frames.

If we lost the clocks,
the ones you snuck onto the wedding registry
and we received instead of the wine glasses we needed,
I’d most certainly feel ambivalence.
Relief, perhaps, that for once,
your belongings were not constant reminders of my mortality.

Tomorrow, if the silverware, unassuming as it is,
or my great grandmother’s china,
even the nothingness of our cotton bed skirt
disappeared,
the burden of keeping a home would seem to me
ancient and forgotten.

I’m certain, someday; the ground in this sinking city will open
and the many things we’ve used to mark the passing of days,
will travel straight into the ocean. And,
I know, in the panic, those brief moments—
the shaking of a home turning quickly to rubble, I’ll reach.
Try to rescue the stuff that has so long defined us. And then,
I’ll remember that I don’t even like juice.