Deed

Let it finally be Friday, let me drive downtown before five, park in the one space left open in front and feed the meter the exact change it needs. Let me go into the office, sit and nod, unfold my check on the table and sign. Let the line not be dotted, let it be solid. Let it be my name. Let it be final. Let me pull into the driveway while it is still light. It’s well past five and well into October and they are just about to change the time. Saturday night on the local news they’ll remind us all to Fall Back, but I make it in under the wire. There is still light. There is still time. I am up the back porch steps, under the awning, my hand on the back door lock the realtor left on. Let me remember rightly the numbers he gave me. Let this not be the dream of the high school locker with the Master Lock whose combination you forgot or fumbled, turning too fast, going too far, everything you’d locked up irretrievable, lost. Let the lock fall open, let me leave it on the steps for the realtor to pick up. Let him pull up the flimsy stakes of the sign in the yard that says I can be bought, let him drive away. Let no Master enter through my door. Let the house be a disaster, I don’t care. Let the smoke-framed blanks where another woman’s pictures marked the wall be the story of how my edges caught fire and the ash at last let me see where I stood. Let the cracked kitchen floor make a map to teach me where not to step, how not to fall through and break my very own back. Let the broken window be a way out, the broken door a way in. Let me go to the hardware store and buy the tools to take the chain off the bedroom door, let me paint the bathroom pink without asking, walk naked and unafraid through all my rooms. Let me pick up a broom and sweep nothing under the rug. Let me sweep it all into the light. Let me do it. Let there be time. Let there be light.