The Yield

I took the wrong turn coming back from the chair,

the Novocain still making my lip feel heavy and wide.

The street looked the same, but the light was all wrong,

slanting off glass that doesn't know my face.

There are blue curtains now,

heavy and clean, where we used to pin the linen.

On the patch of dirt where the hydrangea died,

someone has left a plastic yellow truck,

its wheels turned up toward the empty sky.

It’s not a haunting.

It’s just a change in the soil.