Small Things by Amy Sarah Gillespie

I

Forgive me father for I have sinned

There is a button missing

from the brown corduroy pants

the ones with the yellow bleach spot

on the lower right leg

(Replacing it isn’t necessary right now

I put on a few “winter pounds”)

There’s a button missing nonetheless

There is a button missing

A crack in the kitchen window

and a splatter of blood

A puddle by the basement door that fills

flows back inside and reforms

in front of the washer with the broken switch

The laundry pile resembles a landfill

There’s a button missing

Sloppy threads hang in its absence

and taxes hang over the house

like an ancient curse from a fortune-teller

the tires are bald as a newborn

the cat has a troubling lump in her side

the step by the front door is loose

the roof is sleeping on the job

I I

Forgive me mother, I am failing

The dishes are sliding off the table

(not the good china thank god)

the bills, too, are cascading

the roses remain woefully unpruned

the bathroom mirror is speckled

with toothpaste from a tube improperly squeezed

and there is still a button missing

Old teabags slump like drunken hobos by the sink

A spider-shaped stain on grandmother’s crocheted afghan

makes me flinch over and again, and I pray without ceasing

the dryer swallows the holes along with the socks

the paintings all hang crooked

the chimney genuflects and begs to be swept

and still, there is a button missing

There is a button missing

and I was not as gentle as I could have been,

should have been, when the baby broke my favorite mug

the one you gave me with the hand-carved leaves

the handle that so perfectly fit my hand

the “second” by the famous potter who died

so tragically in that snow-boarding accident

and for which I never sent you a thank you note

I I I

We do our days not knowing

how many are left, not knowing

their worth or if they even have any

We stitch and scrub, pay and scold

We move the thing from here to there

from there to somewhere else

We throw the broken things out

replace them with new ones

We eat and shit and fuck and cry and vomit

and clean it up

We drink and dance and learn and forget

Kill and caress and swallow our doubts

We sleep and

rise in the coldest hours

tiptoe to our secret corner

push our foreheads to the ground

and pray

before the Altar of Small Things