Juliana Gray The Housesitter's Note Welcome home! I hope your trip was fun.
Around here, things were quiet. The plants
did very well, except the potted basil,
which wilted every day like it wanted to die.
I put it in the ground beside the porch.
Hope that's okay with you.The cats and I
were instant friends. They'd curl up on my lap
or on my legs while I stretched out on your couch
and read your magazines. They slept with me
at night in your bed.When I ran out of clothes,
I wanted to borrow some of yours, but they
were kind of snug. I lost eleven pounds,
eating only your salad, drinking your tea.
I chopped the toes out of your shoes.The mail
is on the table. I took the liberty
of writing to your teenaged son at camp.
His letters sounded lonely, and even though
he's far too much like you to come right out
and say so, I think he had a crush
on a counselor who's much too old for him.
I told him that we loved him, enclosed a ten.When I got the midnight call that your father had died,
I took the car and your good Kentucky bourbon
and drove out to the lake. I wept and drank
that warm bitterness, and when I smashed
the bottle on the rocks, the bits of glass
arced across the headlights' yellow beam
like far-off shooting stars.Finally,
surrounded by the photographs of your friends
and loved ones, I passed away in your bed.
It's all right. It was my time to go.
And now, you'd never know that I was there
in your tidy house, your green and purring space,
except for a ghost of bourbon in the air
and a single foreign strand upon your pillow.