Poetry
A monstera in everybody’s
picture window.
Everybody looking into everybody
else’s picture window.
That used to be my house,
my dad bought it for me. One night
shortly after I learned to drive
I went into my parents’ bedroom.
“I hardly have any clothes,”
I said. “I’m like a poor person!”
My mom was folding
my youngest brother’s cloth diapers
and my dad was looking at a brief
and scribbling on a legal pad.
There was a Lorrie Moore book
on the floor next to his chair.
He had put it there as
a prize to be claimed
when he was done with his work.
Tears filled my eyes. “Give me
a hundred dollars, now!”
My dad walked out of the room.
“Lucy …” my mom said.
The Gap was empty
an hour before closing on a weeknight.
My dad ordered some of his books
on a website. He mailed a check
to an address in Seattle
and after a few weeks
the books arrived. The website came
to swallow the mall
that held the Gap
glowing like a treasure in a cave
at the edge of a village
I came to plunder.
I bought a silver sweater with sparkles,
silver pants that matched but had no sparkles,
and a cream-colored fitted T-shirt.
My dad was still too angry to yell at me
when I got home.
My mom had to do it,
standing on the landing in her flannel nightgown.
“Daddy is furious,” she began.
I had everything, and I called it nothing.
Daddy was in the basement looking at a brief
and scribbling on a legal pad.
The Lorrie Moore book
was now on the basement floor.
Sometimes being that angry is kind of fun.
It feels like being high, humming
on top of yourself,
your heart in a different shape. I might
go around back
and jiggle that loose lock until it opens.
I’ll walk into the living room,
pick up their monstera,
and throw it through the window.
That’s my house.
Lucy Biederman is the author of The Walmart Book of the Dead (Vine Leaves Press, 2017). Her work has appeared recently in Sixth Finch. She writes a newsletter about reading, writing, and teaching called The Boredom & the Horror & the Glory. She lives in Chicago.