April

The bed looks blue, like cold lips
and so still, clothes tucked ‘round;
the kitchen, its tiny yellow kettle
and fridge that grumbles all night long;
and her mother’s chair, the dents for 
buttocks and head just resting… always

in the coarse weave of floral chintz.
Those roses on the upholstery 
stay alive, while vases
on shelves support the droop 
of escaping time. The calendar,
protecting the wallpaper since 1997,

starts shedding (the one with pictures 
of English villages tucking their pastel 
rooves into the arm crooks of hills or 
birthed from the hip’s curve 
of tiny pebbled beaches).
As each morning oozes, silted cream

through lace curtains, single 
rectangular dates like spinning blades, 
extricate themselves and come at her; 
waspish and cruel.  And April,
unsteady under this attack of days,
flees outdoors, counting windows 

(those mawkish eyes) that she passes.  
They tell nothing, only reflecting 
her ambling retreat. She hears her 
mother’s voice frail as tungsten:
“Time is what you make of it.”
Hears the repetitive crash of Saturday’s

broom against door frames, skirting boards 
and balustrades.  Always sweeping -  
her uneven percussion.  April’s past,
once cling-wrapped and chilled
like Sunday’s lamb and Daddy’s 
hum, warms slowly in the tepid air.
 
In her mind, the graceful 
gathering of red,  her history dissolving 
blood flowering across gridded paper days.