A House Divided

The house does not know what it wants,
windows have stepped down
from their frames.

Exposed two by fours are confused
by the newly arrived light.
What is that bright thing in the sky,

they ask? The door is off its hinges.
The house is really a gapping hole.
My Aunt Dovina sends me

to the mailbox on my bicycle
(the mailbox
is a quarter of a mile away).

I look back to see
my aunt and my mother driving away
to Fentress, Texas

where my mother is supposed
to give birth to life,
not death.