Exchanging Mondays off to have each day
some extra time at home, to exercise
or write or follow where my fancies lay,
today I chose to vacuum. The surprise,
discovered where it wedged at least nine years
beneath a baseboard corner: a barrette
of pink and yellow plastic that appears
a fossil of old failure and regret.

For as I pry it, rub it and regard
its cheap assembly, I remember Beth
at eight, too sick to make it to the yard,
her stomach stricken wise about the death
of family. Her childhood ransacked,
she left behind this plastic artifact.