The Bedroom

Sheets boiled with lavender, the hard bed.
Handmade eye pillow filled with Great Northerns.
Cactus to the ceiling, orange corsages.
No embarrassment, a calm
that is the opposite of ambition, I think.
Mind like a diary unlocked on the dresser, pages lifting in breeze.
Like those vivid flowers.
Amethyst on a chain: external heart.
Heirlooms in a shallow basket I can look at
without regret, or regard and weep, kneeling, beside.
A water glass, my eyeglasses, arms open
in a waiting embrace. Sleeping on my husband's chest,
his undershirt dryer-warm, arresting as a cloud
in a black-and-white photograph.