After years, love boils to its essence –
fetching your lost objects. The phone. Glasses.
Car keys. The boy. A half-full Starbucks cup
set somewhere in this house, but really
in the Ford. Where is the sheet of passwords
so we can pay the bills? Did we file a return
last year? Each month, a bag of food arrives
for a dog that ran away. The goose wild
chases you’ve sent me on forever. Glue
that sticks a decade to the next. Books, books
and books, but not ever once a pencil.
Footprints settled in the hallway dust, shaped
like slippers I swear were in the closet.
Instead, this box of cards. A comb. Some lace.
Header photograph © Eon Alden.
Rodd Whelpley manages an electric efficiency program for 32 cities across Illinois and lives near Springfield. His poems have appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, 2River View, Star 82 Review, Levee, The Chagrin River Review and other journals. Catch as Kitsch Can, his first chapbook, was published in 2018. Find him at www.RoddWhelpley.com.