Elizabeth Onusko
The fly has spent the past ten years refusing to believe in the window.
On the other side of the glass,
my last memory of this house continues to play out —
dad sleeps on the couch,
brothers watch TV. The backdoor slams.
Mom kneels into a flowerbed,
grabs at dead annuals, shakes soil from knots of roots.
I don’t bother her.
The sooner she comes in, the sooner she’ll leave.
When she does,
we dissolve into factions of accusation —
In this corner:
my folded hands,
dad’s lidless eyes,
the boys’ lungs
puffing and leaking,
puffing and leaking.
In that corner:
dad’s suit of arteries
coiled like a hose,
my ears, a pile
of empty throats.
The standoff lasts for years until I discover
truth is only temporary.
Alliances shift; wallpaper tears at itself,
carpets ripple,
lamps burn out simultaneously. Then it stops.
Suddenly everything is
as it was, no damage done, no damage is ever done.