One-Year Contract

In keeping with the apartment theme from last week: 

One-Year Contract

Two armoires,

A fireplace,

A stucco kitchen floor,

And an English garden—

What extravagance

In a suburban apartment,

Especially in comparison

To our last cramped place.

We’d have the first floor—

The owner, a lovely

British woman, lived

On the second level.

The downside:

One heating system for both spaces.

The upside:

She left town each weekend.

We signed the one-year contract

In summer, and placed clothing

In the armoires and my desk in the

Corner to write grad class papers.

The first weekend on the patio

Squirrels dropped apples on our heads,

But the dahlias, in every size and hue,

And butterflies brightened our spirits.

The humidity was incessant—

No matter how many times we

Scrubbed, the mushrooms

Returned in bathroom crooks.

Come fall, the wasps marched

Into the living room to die.

Come winter, the fireplace

Released plumes of tar smoke.

We did not control the heat—

She complained it was too hot.

I washed dishes in my winter coat,

Typed papers wearing fingerless gloves.

My breath came out in cloudbursts

In the bedroom ‘til we bought a space heater.

She complained about the electric bill.

We broke our lease two months early.

With a baby on the way,

There was No Way we could stay.

The lovely landlady was in her garden,

Which was  returning to its former glory.

She sighed and said

She didn’t know why tenants stayed only one year….

http://magpietales.blogspot.com/2015/01/mag-255.html