Perishable

by Elanor

When my husband and I moved into our apartment,
I found in his old room a string of rose-lights,
pink buds, green leaves, all wispy-veined,
that we hung up around the kitchen window.
Their vine was an electrical cord that plugged
into the wall and made the flowers glow red
and made the place look like a ten-year-old girl’s bedroom.
They lasted, evergreen-and-pink, for four seasons.
This morning I found a few fragments of fake leaf,
brown and brittle, on the kitchen table.
They reminded me of the bulldozers on our street last week
ripping up pockmarked pavement to put in new
smooth black stuff that steamed in piles
before it was steamrollered level,
and of Roman roads that lasted a long time but not forever.
Then I thought of how indignant I was to learn that
when you buy yourself a house, expect
to have work done on it every ten years or so—
retiling, recarpeting, reroofing.
When I buy something, especially at so great a price,
I don’t want to have to pay for it again.