I confess now I have begun to henna
my red hair gone dull
in parts and penny bright in others.
And I always tried to subdue
its wildness. But when the hull of our
marriage busted rock
and began to leak, we both thought
it was a good idea to renovate
the kitchen, together, by ourselves.
We closed up the hall
to the back rooms to create more
privacy and took down a load-
bearing wall in hoped of opening
the “flow.” My husband looked
like Christ hauling the salvaged
timbers from a warehouse deep
in the Piney woods one by one
up the front stoop, laying
them in our suburban living room,
posing as a Brooklyn loft.
We framed the new wide space:
one as header, two as column braces,
then sat on the floor cross-legged
looking at our work in progress,
the way the wood had aged,
the colors and striations, notches
and hammered pegs. We felt our
fifties ranch had a new story now,
something with weight, and we
held hands a little while before
getting up, heading to the shower,
falling back into our routine.
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