Sven Heuchert

She said: It’s done.
I waited the whole time. I waited in the kitchen.
I drank coffee with a little Old Grand Dad.
I said nothing.
No, I said: It’s alright.

She had hired men from town, and they came early.
I didn’t watch.
I read a book by Jim Wayne Miller instead.
I just read the first line of every poem,
until the book was finished.
That’s how long it took them.

You know, a lot of these things meant something to me.
They meant something at some point.
And who says they don’t come in handy eventually?
Like, in the near future, for example?
You never know, now do you?

I lived with my wife for forty years.
She never complained.
Well …
I know, too, it had to be done.
But still.

Now all that’s left is just dirty, rotten gras.
No good.
Nothing will ever grow out of that soil.
But you never know, now do you?

She knew what it had meant to me.
She cooked pork chops with sweet potatoes for me
and drizzled cowboy candy over it.
Life goes on, I guess.

It’s the space I fear the most.
All this empty space.
The things belonged to me, I owned them.
I could do whatever I wanted with them.
Leave them in the sun.
Leave them in the rain.
Forget about them.

But who owns the space?
Tell me, who owns the space?