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.
Author Bio

Cat Dixon
Cat Dixon (she/her) is the author of Eva and Too Heavy to Carry (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2016, 2014) and the chapbook, Table for Two (Poet’s Haven, 2019). Recent work published in Sledgehammer Lit and Whale Road Review. She is a poetry editor at The Good Life Review.
Website: catdix.com ; Twitter: @DixonCat