Empty Nest
My fault —waking too early, worrying I am bad
for the garden, soil vindictive as a Gothic
stepmother. Bad for the pantry, Pyrex taunting me
idle & lidless. Woodlice scissor my spine
as chores pile up. Every window in the attic demands
to be opened. Branches of the plum tree must
be pruned properly. Dislodging a robin’s nest I marvel
at the barren bowl perfectly knitted with twigs
& moss. Picture the female who wove then fled, beak
urgent as trowel stabs. Did she fear cold fingers
of an early frost, grieve the loss of a newborn. Resisting
the flinty edge of solitude I hurl myself at riotous
tongues of compost, ignore the fox upending next-door’s bins
a migraine lurking among coffee grinds. Unpeg
line-hardened linens, pulling a fitted sheet over sadness.
The world beyond my fence rustles. I gather blue
eggshells in my gloved hand, fragile as teardrops. Stumble
up the path overgrown with honeysuckle
in the prime of life, so close to death. I wait, worrying
on the doorstep with the light diminishing
to make peace with all I have buried.
Rebecca Faulkner is the author of Permit Me to Write My Own Ending, a finalist for the 2024 Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. Her work appears in New York Quarterly, The Maine Review, The Poetry Society of New York, CALYX Press, Berkeley Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is a 2023 poetry recipient of the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women, the winner of Black Fox Literary Magazine’s 2023 Writing Contest, and the 2022 winner of Sand Hills Literary Magazine’s National Poetry Contest. She was a 2021 Poetry Fellow at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. For additional information: www.rebeccafaulknerpoet.com.
