Sale Pending

Sale Pending

(“I am the living bread which came down out of heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” John 6:51a)

I never liked to let anyone guess about my inner mechanism,
and whatnot,
and
what
not
may not be right with me.
I am just a shelf of cheap knickknacks, picked up in
curio shops.

But you, you named your cats,
Frik
and
Frak
and they always hid beneath your bed.
They replaced your badboy bigdog Bob
who was a puppy until the cancer choked him
like an aging man. You could not be consoled,
though you scolded his misbehavior often. We both
knew
that rambunctious boy was your mirror, the playful reflection
of the youth we both once knew.

But you followed him, friend, a mere four months ago and now
I am the one unconsoled. I walk by your house four or five
times a week,
and I have for these three years. Stopping by, I
would find you antic, sometimes sucking oxygen in
wheezing uncertainty. We shared Christmas Eve
vespers,
we sat at the Thanksgiving table,
and the last time we ate was my birthday at
the Mexican restaurant downtown. Everyone in
our hamlet loved you, and Maria’s was the best place
to celebrate.

But you are gone and my heart hangs dusty on a dry branch
of a walnut tree. I still walk by your house and barely can breathe.
But I refuse to take a different route.

The long ranch gate to your property was open today,
your house has been on the market for weeks. Someone must
be mowing the yard, or staging it for the next open house.
I almost turned in toward the glass doors where we would meet
time and time again. But I could not. They had already
removed the wooden rocker from your front porch
and the MIA/POW flag from its railings.
I moved on, like I have scores of times since I never saw
you again,
and looked up. Men were laying
new shingles over plywood; men were preparing the
last home you owned. Then I saw the sign, the realtor had
amended it;
“Sale Pending”, and I cried.

You were never shy about letting me know about your
inner inclinations. You were angry at me only once, and that
just a week before you died. You wanted me to drive to Seattle to
bring you home, to let you die in front of the window where you
watched the deer in the field and the
ships sailing down the Columbia.
I could not, and my heart cracked like sunburned skin.
I knew you might not
survive the ride back home.

Four months ago I cried again. We laid you to rest along with
Big/Bad/Bad/Boy Bob. Frik and Frak thrive on a farm somewhere.

And I am left wanting to hear you curse the same void
again
that we both crawl through. And I want to

Share a whiskey and a taco just one more time.