Shelf Life

The water in the sink is getting cold

while we trade the same exhausted words.

I'm looking past you at the chipped shepherdess,

a bit of porcelain my grandmother sold

to me as a compliment, or so I thought.

She said I was easier to look at than to live with,

and I smiled like it was about my hair.

But the dust on that girl’s blue bonnet

is thick as the silence in this kitchen,

and she hasn't moved an inch in thirty years.

She’s perfect because she doesn't breathe,

because she doesn't demand her dinner or the truth.

I’m finally starting to see the threat

in being something kept merely for the view,

standing still while the real world breaks in two.