Mattress

A marriage doesn’t end in court but on a mattress,

side edges hugged in opposition to avoid a touch.

A divorce decree is merely an announcement,

public testimony that two people who were once in love,

were melded into one heart, mind and body lost their bearings, drifted so apart that they can’t find the other

even in the darkness of a room they always shared.

The gossips want to know who cheated and the judges

beat the brave one down with wisdom based on nothing

more than their own situations, their own dreams, their

standards of what has to, has to, be. They cannot know

and will not see that one person can’t create an Us

without another who is just as focused on the wonder of it all,

each moving closer and pursuing or it comes undone,

unraveled, leaving space between them that solidifies,

becomes a barrier, a wall of hurt and accusation,

indifference, neglect. At first it may be breachable,

the other reachable across the coolness of the sheets,

but if it’s not, it’s not, and there is nothing

to be done but grit your teeth and hold on tightly to that edge

...or leave.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2020

A Hint of Pink

Six weeks into the quarantine of 2020, 

something changed.

A shift of sorts, a breeze of fresh air 
in the gloom that smelled a little bit like hope. 

There were reasons to ignore it

but instead I took a long deep breath 

and let it seep into my pores.

I put polish on my fingernails and on my toenails too. A little thing, a sign of hope, rebelliousness perhaps. It just felt right to spruce the old girl up a bit although no one would notice except me. Some make-up 
and a spritz of that perfume that was a gift,

so costly I would never buy it for myself.

No one else would smell it, no one else could tell

beneath my mask that I had made the effort, put on lipstick even,

but it dawned on me that I’m the one I do it all for anyway.

Traffic on the highway seemed to fall in step with this new sense

as if the whole town called a meeting and the vote was “we are done”

with dreary thoughts about the summer even though

the pundits and the politicians and the stats and graphs still drone

all through the day and night. I didn’t mean to start this riot

of rebellion, people crowding beaches and demanding that

they get their hair done. All I thought I’d do was paint my nails.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2020