First Thoughts

Staying, a poem

Staying 

Just for today let’s leave the paint smear 
on the coffee maker handle. 
Do we really need to make our new 
home spotless? Keep it pristine? Didn’t 
we buy an old house to keep old houses old? 
Like Austin, like Portland, keeping 
weird year after year, shouldn’t we keep things
old? Earn some patina? Further the 
future by beating into the present? 
Let’s leave the paint smear on the coffee
maker handle. Just for today can we
leave? Can we let go of our bodies and our 
ideas of our bodies and just listen to the 
great expanse of the raspberry bush
in the backyard? There are millions 
of organisms dying daily, so why can’t 
we see the beauty in paint left to harden 
on our brand new coffee maker. According 
to branding it is certified by the European 
Coffee Brewing Centre, which means 
something to some people. We are those 
people, but despite—no, because of—the ticket
price we paid for this boondoggle, 
we need to let it go the way of the buffalo. 
Let it out like our hair, our dogs, our angst. 
Please: let’s leave the paint smear. It’ll remind us 
of the one time we fought in front of our children 
while painting a wall one of us didn’t care 
to paint anyway. Everything 
is impermanent, according to some. I’m 
trying to be some of that some. 
The glass carafe will break, the 
paint will fade or get painted over after we 
move or die, the moods for which both of us campaign
on this airless Saturday will be forgotten. Let’s 
leave the paint smear so we can remind ourselves 
of the pain when our kids told us we argued too much 
and we didn’t talk after they went to bed. Let’s leave the paint 
in the garage next time. There is no rush to make 
things new today. There is no rush to make 
anything at all. Today, can we just leave the painstaking
strokes to YouTube tutorials? Can we? Just today: 
can we leave? Can we pray? Can we spray the paint 
shack shut? Vandalize the neighborhoods of 
ambition and just leave, just be, just feel the 
familiar fuzz of the raspberry, plucked and popped 
and bursting with everything we expect: sweet, tart, 
seeds stuck in our teeth.