It is I in a dusty corner on folding chair, sore with grief, keeping company to these out of season mums,their fragrance heavy and sickening this somber, somber day.
Just wait here a bit, just wait.
The front door, a revolving carnival for comers-and-goers; the visitors to this fatherless home. Oh how these sordid travelers here press on; pressing, pressing, stamping through this room, wooden-floored, rich with scent of black coffee cream-streaked.
Amidst funeral stuffiness and proper inaction will I wait here, will I wait a cornered mum. The whispers, the vespers, the shuffling of feet cautious now.
Strange, the candle placed table-center will stay lit, will not keep a-flame, here where draft would be welcomed; and I shrug, waiting, smelling the mums.
Clangs the porcelain china, crisp as the hurried
colognes and ancient perfumes, sudden as timorous outbursts of laughter, dampened instinctively by strict repose.
A bit longer, wait a bit longer; twisting on my chair.
