So This Is How It Ends

says a lady trying on a mink,
strangers picking through your things.

A wrought iron bed striped with light.
A shawl embroidered in gold thread.

On the nightstand, Balzac, a riot
of silk, sequined evening bags. Dust-

encrusted, a typewriter just like dad’s.
What did we expect to find still living

behind that gate, the sign that read,
half-off? What greets us instead:

whiff of daily coffees, candles spent,
a draft through that once-blue door.

We add our sighs to the windowpane
open to vines below. Everything must go.

Her Life

a cup filled almost to the cracked lip.
Some days it sloshed on tile.
Some days, every drop withheld.

Five years gone, five months —
does it matter?
Each day, the same cold sea.

From her, amid stained pots
I learned the waywardness of fire.
How water cleanses, forgives.

The rosary beads
her fingers buffed nightly.
The steadfast gallop of hours.

Her last books wrapped and shipped.
In a ring of light
someone reads the Psalms.

Envy

noun. a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities, or luck 1. their house smelled of chocolate 2. shelves sagging with books, jasmine in the window3. a mother who stayed home baking brownies 4. her voice like summer rain. 5. I got the wooden spoon to lick 6. my friend got the mixing bowl 7. aromas of butter and cocoa warming the green kitchen verb. desire to have a quality, possession, or other desirable attribute belonging to (someone else) 1. when the great owl of night swooped overhead 2. [my mother still at the hospital making rounds] 3. I stole home in darkness 4. feeling like the thief who slips on a corduroy jacket someone left on a bus 5. flicked on the lights 6. wore my chocolate-scented coat to bed 7. burnt sugar matting my hair

Angela Narciso Torres is the author of three poetry collections: What Happens is Neither, To the Bone, and Blood Orange. She serves as a senior and reviews editor for RHINO Poetry.