Some call it celadon,
sea green, historic colors
any of us can find on
paint cans in the big box stores.
But she called it Spider green,
like lichen on boulders in
the forests dark and mossy,
so delicate, so hidden.
Another phrase she made up
as if words were a child’s game
(as she said, a rose is a
rose is a rose all the same)
and shouldn’t she express
feelings others failed to see?
Obvious to us, of course,
her web-like intimacy:
the armoire she named Monstro,
chairs cat-shaped, her Salvation
Army finds in the spider’s
green mansion that we lived in.
Carla Sarett's recent work appears or is forthcoming in Prole, Leaping Clear, Halfway Down the Stairs, Third Wednesday, Deracine and elsewhere; and her essays have been nominated for Best American Essays and the Pushcart Prize.Her novel, A Closet Feminist, will be published in 2022 (Unsolicited Press.). Carla lives in San Francisco.
Latest posts by Carla Sarett (see all)
- My mother’s shade - 8th January 2021