The Quiet Woman

The quiet woman cleans the house that she does not own, she washes the dishes she did not eat from, she does not mind. The quiet woman puts afternoon tea in her morning coffee cup. She writes morning letters to past relatives six feet in the ground. All through the day, the day! She sits and stares out of the window she watches the white automobiles and yellow buses go down, go down the street, the street. The mourners bring home gift bags from six months of resemblance, and we eat and drink in their memory as they rest in caskets in marble tombs. The quiet woman prepares something to eat as the guests laugh in the next room she takes the broom and sweeps the kitchen and holds back some feeling. She makes the coffee, muddy and milky the guests wonder where is the host and they put their heads down and mourn. Now in this chilling November month the furnace turns on for the umpteenth time and warms an empty house of nothingness and bad dreams.