Red Rover

Jill Bialosky

We take our last walk.

Walls stripped of portraits,

warped mirrors, dressing tables,

and the grandfather clock

with its stoic face

and elaborate gentle fingers.

For years we struggled to break

free of the closeness of rooms,

the obligation of birth order,

the metaphysics that bind

one element to the other,

as if we were still wild girls

playing wild rover in the garden,

breaking through a chain of linked hands.