the new place

In the cab ride to the new place,

I clutched the cattle head we had hung above our doorway.

Bubble wrap was not as safe as my hands.

Horns weapons in my lap, danger in too-close proximity.

I would sleep on our couch for six months, but didn’t know it then.

I watched August pass and saw the orchids I was given at birth

that bloomed each summer so stalwart

slowly smother themselves, breathing the dust the renovation gave us,

but an old apartment gasped for the first time in a long while.

When we left the old place and saw what had been ours—

tumbleweeds of dog hair, splintered wood, windows rough with smog—

we knew that a house was a place to sleep and nothing more, clean bones.

Though we hung a skull amid the dust and dying, it was a living thing.

…

© 2015 Anna-Christina Betekhtin, All Rights Reserved.