Sellers Motivated

For awhile the house
sagged on itself,
then new people
moved in
with teacups that chink
in a different key
from the teacups
that lived here before.

There is an innocent
pouring of coffee,
a holding themselves apart,
a surreptitious glance
into my garden
as though I grew
rare greens. How hard
will they struggle
to heal that house?
Or will the cat
they took in
rend the curtains
and rain pour over
the sills at last?

:: Mary Rose O’Reilly, in Ploughshares (winter 2007-08)