After You Sold My Horse and Maybe My Dog By Trish Saunders

You warned me: don’t go into this memory toolshed 

In a parallel life, none of it happened 

you didn’t die of ALS, you stayed married

to my mother who didn’t lose her brother, 

his parachute opened safely over Lorraine,

and just why is that my middle name? 

What have I to do with occupied France? 

Grass under my window was trampled by tots

playing hide and seek, not by your boots.

A rifle slanting across the barn door  

casts a thin shadow that looks like you. It’s not. 

I haven’t seen my appaloosa mare in weeks,   

my poodle, too, is missing, it’s been a long while  

since I heard his tail thumping on the rug. 

Did any of this happen? I can no longer be sure. 

I’ve been practicing saying, “fuck off” to old photos 

in case anyone in them is still alive, or maybe

I’ll leave flowers on some stranger’s grave.  

 Trish Saunders hates an oxford comma. She was fired from her last editing job.