Person You May Know

Facebook continues to give me a list called People You May Know,

my ex-husband always in the top position. No matter how many times

I click reject he keeps popping up as a Person I May Know and not

a Person I Once Thought I Knew or a Person Who is Impossible to Know

or a Person Who Gave Me Two Children Who Grew into Republicans.

Time is taking its time erasing him, is what I’m saying. Thirty years

after divorce and the last four of his Social still mix in my head.

Creep, journalists call it. Mission Creep. First Husband Creep.

This morning is so quiet I can hear a man two blocks away when he sneezes.

Someone could probably explain the acoustics of this. There are yellow

and blue and rust-colored flowers around the border of our maroon rug

that’s become worn from the way we walk on it, from the habit of our feet

going from one room to the other, a pattern no one could have predicted,

like the landscaped garden path that is not quite the path

where people actually walk and crush the grass and kick the pebbles

to the side. Sometimes I look at a new sofa and imagine it worn out and dirty,

or a new rug with the stains it will have some day, or a springtime garden

already brown and off the bloom. 

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