Unwelcome Guest

Melancholy wanders through
your livingroom, a bear

stinking of old things devoured
but not quite digested, her footfalls

heavy on the carpet, a shuffling
gait, snuffling for something you

have strung carefully in the rafters. You,
standing in the kitchen with the dish water

running and the radio on commercial
break, no knives in reach, the diningroom

table still strewn with utensils because
dinner consisted of cold––cold

spaghetti conversation (limp, unpalatable), cold
weather seeping through the uncaulked windows––

you wait for her to stop swatting at that
something, suspended above the sofa, just

out of reach. She is ignoring the din
from the kitchen and the food on dishes

not yet cleared, intent only on what she
can almost reach. She has risen

on two feet, when you decide that
that is close enough, and kill

the radio, turn the tap, her guilt-thick breathing
caught between sudden silences.