Maggie Millner

EXPROPRIATION

No one belongs to anyone, I know.
My friends possess me least of all: no yoke

of blood, no halter spun from pheromone and heat.
Today was small, a bout of sun

I doubt I’ll think of soon. The traffic
crept. I read and thought of work and loss and how that word

supposes having had, then having less.
I couldn’t possibly. Suppose I did.

Suppose I visited
the house where we had lived

to find it only unroofed walls, a porch
eaten by vetch. Suppose

I bridled then, I ticked. I felt myself
a mouth trying to close around a brick.

Suppose I dug into the earth,
sifting for latchkeys, glitter, gloves

that might still fit my living hand. What was I after
anyway? A scrap of proof

to vouch for me, You see? She too can say
she had, has had, was had.

MAGGIE MILLNER has had poems appear in The Awl, Narrative, The New Yorker, and Poetry Northwest. She lives with her cat in Brooklyn, New York.