Good Bones
–Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

Photo by Reba Spike on Unsplash

Stone
–Maggie Smith

Photo by Martin Turgoose on Unsplash

Threshold
–Maggie Smith

Photo by Filip Kominik on Unsplash

At the End of My Marriage, I Think of Something My Daughter Said About Trees
–Maggie Smith

When a tree is cut down, the sky’s like
finally, and rushes in.

Even when you trim a tree,
the sky fills in before the branch

hits the ground. It colors the space blue
because now it can.

 

Photo by Erwin Voortman on Unsplash