Glass
The Door
They reminded me of you.
The two housekeepers,
older women from the deep
South, scraping insects
from the windows
with a razor blade.
You held a college
degree, cleaned houses
through your pregnancy.
Lugging the vacuum
up each stair, mother—
you were fastidious.
They ate peanut butter
and jelly, went out to smoke
and flirt, but minded
their work—they checked
and double checked for you
in each window pane.
for LG
A frozen field,
the marbled lake.
What I don’t know
is that you
have laid all
of this before me.
You stand behind,
eyes wide as a raptor’s.
I create a carpet
of ice between us.
I want to say,
this is the end
of happiness. Will
I accept love?
Sandra Marchetti is the author of Confluence, a full-length collection of poetry from Sundress Publications (2015). She is also the author of four chapbooks of poetry and lyric essays. Sandra’s poetry appears widely in Poet Lore, Blackbird, The McNeese Review, Southwest Review, Subtropics, and elsewhere. Her prose can be found at Barrelhouse, The Rumpus, Pleiades and elsewhere. Sandy earned an MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry from George Mason University and now serves as the Coordinator of Tutoring Services at the College of DuPage in the Chicagoland area. She is the poetry editor for River Styx.
