Bleak House

It was a bleak house.
I carried the keys,
kept a basket of small tasks,
occupying days, carrying years
through a fog of groceries,
checkbooks, dry cleaning.

It was a bleak house.
I chose the new washer,
folded sheets, fit myself
to their corners, held myself
through winters,
breathing my own warmth,
shaking off storms.

How could I explain that autumn,
that brief fading beauty, hurt so,
too colorful to watch all that
turning to dust, leaves falling,
crumbling like me.

How could I explain that spring
seared me with the tenderness
of its possibility, the way it ripens
into summer, lush, beyond my grasp,
too green for the barren twigs
of my fingers.

Somehow I bloom again.
Somehow I bloom
from small seeds lain dormant
in emptiness then suddenly
blown free, lifted perhaps
by some careless bird,
and dropped to this fertile soil
bearing words like new shoots,
believing in something again.