Focus on the Outside Bets   

Broken glass coffee table repaired with duct tape hosts

UNO cards and poker chips scattered like homeless

tumbleweeds and crickets. You can’t clean up with  

that tangled string of pearls clutched in your hand. Are you 

enamored with messy spaces or games? You’re a 

roulette winner despite the lack of telekinesis, but do you prefer 

solitaire? Shuffle, deal, flip, flip. In your back pocket, a lost

card from the night before. You’ve done it now—

overplayed your hand. You resort to games from the past:

truth or dare, seven minutes in heaven, hide and seek, but one

can’t play these things alone. So you decide it’s time to clean

house—Windex that window and table, Pledge that bookcase, 

Hoover the dust bunnies from their warrens, and rearrange—

open floor plans are trendy and meant for the middle-aged. 

Remember accidents can result in broken bones, a surprise 

suit from one of your so-called friends, another broken 

Emory board or coffee table. It’s time to close up shop.

Masking tape frames the sign on your front door: no soliciting

and no proselyting. The last line in bold red font proclaims:

NO VISITING. I was taken back and left without knocking.