So maybe one day I’ll just settle
in a pastel senior citizens’ home
my life reduced to what can fit onto a dresser top,
a life raft.
Some nice man and I will bond over the side effects of
our blood pressure pills
and then just settle in together like ribs after a deep sigh.
He will absent-mindedly call me by his dead wife’s name.
I will turn down my hearing aids.
He will have the best hard candies in the whole joint.
I will quietly hope to die first so as not to be left again.
His children will politely hate me,
bringing nice though impersonal gifts at Christmas.
It’ll be fine.
Just fine.