Home Less

The hand lies half opened on the sidewalk
cupped as if to hold something beside air. Or
someone. Dirt
lines each crease,
nails are cracked; lined with black.
Photographic negative of a French Manicure.
Blurred vision focuses on minute ant
crawling along a crack in the sidewalk.
Eyes move, like arthritic limbs,
to the outstretched palm
supplicating within mere inches of the
world passing by.

They, as a body, do not see her.
A drunk, they might muse or drug addict,
should she register, but she doesn't because to them
she no longer matters; less perhaps in their world
than the ant that now lies crushed beneath
a Louboutin red sole with no soul.

They see not Marguerite VanDannenbery, who vanished.
Missing from her garden twelve blocks west and
six days ago to bring Miss Lottie some flowers. She missed
Lottie who had wandered to some other world
and she sat down to wait. Time holds no meaning for Marguerite;
her grasp of time having spilled through her fingers
much like the wilted daisy petals on the sidewalk.
The day her husband died a year ago
the brownstone with the floral fantasy garden lost
its magic and the pieces that comprised Marguerite shattered.

Sarah Peabody is out walking with her mother. No one listens
to a four year old. They do not hear her crying for the lady next door
and her mother scolds and says they will be late; there is no time.
Her voice penetrates dimmed foggy recesses.
Marguerite sits up and watches Sarah being tugged away
and thinks of the daisies in her back garden.
She stands and slowly wanders back home, fits her key
into her gate and wonders if she forgot to feed the cat.