Smearing milky paint
on landlord beige
covering up
whatever regrets
the walls had surrounded.
Clean start.

This move is the last
hands and fingers crossed
as I pass over boxes
on their way.
My coffee pot
for percolating each day’s frets.
My Smith-Corona typewriter,
sheets of carbon paper,
my all-important bottle of Wite-Out,
almost corrects mistakes.

Cloudy stills of friends perched
on that lumpy couch,
remembered snippets
following me upstairs
and down.
Ghosts forming round Ohs!
with their open mouths
asking who and how.
Me jumping through the holes.

Susan Eyre Coppock is a retired French teacher. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Nixes Mate, Common Ground Review, museum of americana, Paterson Literary Review, Free State Review, and elsewhere.