Two by Erin Jamieson

Erin received an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University of Ohio. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in After the Pause, Into the Void, Flash Frontier, Mount Analogue, Blue River, The Airgonaut, Evansville Review, Canary,Shelia-Na-Gig, and Foliate Oak Literary, among others.

 

Renovations

you follow me to our room
cataloguing faded wall paint
cracked picture frames
dusty windowsills

I do not think you notice
I am silent

it was be easy, you insist
a few cans of eyelet blue
some Endust, frames from
the discount store

I do not think you notice
how I fall
on our bed
my hair unwashed
as it has been for days

just a few fixes here and there
you say, our home could be
beautiful

but as our cabinets improve
I break a little more

 

The Attic is filling

the swelling floorboards
& dusty rafters
not family heirlooms
but trinkets from past loves
or lives we might have led
imagined tickets stubs
& dried bouquets

not to exclude the aroma
of passion flower perfume
snaking through the vents
or the hollow notes of a violin
that is played without passion

I think we feel these things
as we rise, eat, go to work,
clean the house, fall asleep
before we have a chance
to make love

but what can be done?
the attic is overflowing
& its excess has blended
so seamlessly into our halls
& cracked ceilings