with a notebook that said:
they care how things look.
You care whether things last.
Watch what happens next.
So I watched.
I watched them demand I pay the penthouse bills.
I watched them come to my gate
to inspect a home they'd mocked,
to stay a weekend they weren't invited to,
to take money I'd finally stopped giving.
And I reached into my apron
for the little black remote he'd left me,
and I closed the iron gate
with them on the outside,
where uninvited people belong.
He left my son a view he couldn't afford.
He left me a home no one could take.
And he left me the one thing
I'd never had in that guest room:
a boundary that holds.
They valued how things look.
I valued whether things last.
Only one of us
