WHAT SHE WOULD BE
 

Last night at the dinner table he said,
“Let’s say what we think we’d be,
if we were inanimate objects.” She said,
no pause,“I’d be an old velvet change purse,
the kind with red satin lining,
and I wouldn’t be full of coins,
but frayed receipts, lists, numbers,
stubs for anything that must be
picked up, remembered.”

 
 
  © 1995 Moving Out: A Feminist Literary & Arts Journal