Sometimes I wonder if I will ever
master the art of losing. You
will never see my new house. Walls
painted your favorite Agreeable Beige
furniture arranged and that serigraph
you sent for my old house is hung
where you would suggest. If only
you were here to laugh and hold the nail
then reminisce about our fetish for yellow
walls in Sunny Veranda. After all this time
shouldn’t I be over you dying? Sure,
I can forget about waiting for your calls
with test results and chemo. Hospice
coming and going from your house. Still
I say, ‘I love you,’ slicing the fleshy pulp
whenever the toast pops up.
Bonnie Larson Staiger is a North Dakota Assoc. Poet Laureate and author of two award-winning poetry collections: Destiny Manifested and In Plains Sight (published by NDSU Press). She thrives on the Great Plains not far from the Badlands of North Dakota. There she often writes of the poignant subtleties of life on the high plains of the New American West as well as a view of the world observed from that place.