A Housewife’s Comment
At midnight, while I’m dusting off doorknobs
You’re rolled into your bed
Some caterpillar in chrysalis
No movement
Until a child’s hand pulls you off the pillow
As she grabs for bed covers
Her laughter bouncing strong and transparent as June sun rays
Her arms now holding something new
Not remembering where she dropped you, or caring.
I know where to find your stomach,
Your lean limbs,
Your strong slender fingers,
Your large wide apart eyes that make you my bearded Byron.
Why I could bring you all the way back from Hades without
turning once or speaking,
Give you spring green, and find you wisteria,
If you untwine your bedclothes
And slip me in
For the cricket’s chirp tonight.
Day in bed
Decided to spend the day in bed.
Coffee works…some.
Medication? I don’t know.
Today, did things housewives do.
Cloroxed out bathtub: Toxic experience.
Fed cat & fed cat!
Laundry.
How does one do old age?
Certainly I don’t know.
I knew raising children &
Work. Avocations made
Sense during that period.
And now? Now! What?
The Slender Past
The moment like a hyperventilating moth
Scurrying wildly
foaming
spitting
heaving—
Its wings break apart and the middle remains
The slender past:
motionless
whole
A sliver of the other’s death
A projection into another future
Roberta “Bobby” Santlofer (1943-2020) was a mother of sons, an avid reader, and a poet. A posthumous collection of her poetry is forthcoming. Santlofer’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Black Coffee Review, Bluepepper, Chiron Review, Eunoia Review, Gargoyle, Philadelphia Stories, Grey Sparrow Review, The Pangolin Review, Remington Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Vita Brevis, Wine Cellar Press and elsewhere.
Serotonin 