When You Weren’t There

   by Kathryn Jacobs

 
When you weren’t there to make me wash the sheets,
I cultivated a relationship
With pastel blue till we grew intimate:
the pillow-case wore make-up. Underwear
ran out – and I bought more; my dirty clothes
lurked in the closet, burying my shoes
to get attention. No such luck. And yet
the house looked – not too bad, considering. 
 
When I bestirred myself to socialize,
the house was grateful: that meant vacuuming. 
Still, I ran out of Kleenex. What I ate
depended on the counsel of the frig. 
For though I liked to shop, I wouldn’t, now
that you weren’t here to make me. 
                                                      
                                 But the house
out-waited me at last. There came a day
when pastel blue looked old: I washed the sheets.
And while they churned, I found my buried shoes 
and (wearing two) I filled my hungry frig
with food you wouldn’t like. Then scrubbed the house
at last, at leisure, and by increments –
though you weren’t there to make me.