I’ve resolved to stop starting sentences with because
and nowhere to say sorry.
Even though I am sorry
to have spent $18.99
for a mouse deterrent that clicks and flashes
in the warm engine compartment.
We all want someplace warm and quiet to sleep.
It’s snowing, did I mention? Maybe you already looked outside,
watching it turn the skinny pine shadows white,
how it collects in little drifts on the windshield wipers.
Where should I park when I return to the city?
A new ordinance: No person shall sleep in a parked motor vehicle
between the hours of 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM.
Maybe I could write a letter to my representative,
telling these elected men–always men in Montana–
that their dream and my dream of home look different.
What does it look like out your window?
Out mine this spring flurry fills the gap between trees,
hiding the jumbled geographies I drove slowly over.
Did you know gyp comes from gypsy comes from caravanning
with home and family and food all clinking together,
memorialized in a stigma of frugality and bartering.
If not a slander, then a romance: I’m a gypsy,
a woman with rose-water hair says
simply for leaving one place for another.
Already the white moves into melting,
becoming nothing but a horoscope
read over breakfast and forgotten
as the day turns another hour older.
I am not a gypsy, not homeless, not lawless.
I am learning
home is wherever I soften
my guard to sleep.
First published in Quibble Lit, Issue 4: Muddle.
LINDS SANDERS 