When I’m Late Coming Home, I Find the Door Locked, Porch Light Off
Starting with a line from Ruth Stone
Carolee Bennett
Violet Night
Thad DeVassie
You must try to say / Something when you are in need,
must try to say I’m lonely. Yes, lonely as a cherry blossom.
Grief grimaces every limb. You must try to say
lonely as the landfill. Abundant. Embarrassed. Lonely as
the moon hula hooping the house with no mother
counting orbits, applauding. Lonely as rings twisted off,
tossed in the glovebox. Does any marriage stick
to the plan? I’m trying to say I’d hoped for shelter.
Crawled here on my belly. Half soldier. All elbow.
Disturbed carpet pile worming below the hunter’s
line of sight. Wilderness, they insist, no place
for a lady. I return to a dark house. Trail slow
fingertips along walls. Carry bedding to the couch.
When in need, I hear Ruth say, spit it out.
Drag pots and pans from their cupboards.
Mugs. Glasses. Utensils, too. Always a surprise
how much we stuff inside, hide from ourselves.
I lug it all to the backyard. Hatchet wedding registry
knives into fence posts. The neighbors keep their distance
now, and we tear everything open with our teeth.
Carolee Bennett is a writer and visual artist living in Upstate New York, where – after placing second in a local poetry competition – she has fun saying she’s the “almost” poet laureate of Smitty’s Tavern. Her work appears in several online literary magazines, Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net and in The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy anthology alongside former U.S. Poets Laureate. She has an MFA in poetry, works full-time as a writer in social media marketing, and publishes a popular poetry blog that earns more than 11K views a month and 70K unique visitors annually. Find Carolee on Instagram and BlueSky.
Thad DeVassie is a writer and artist/painter from Ohio. He is the author three chapbooks and was awarded the James Tate Poetry Prize (SurVision Books). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and appears in Best Small Fictions 2025. His artwork has appeared in galleries, private collections, and more recently in literary journals including Salt Hill, Phoebe, Bat City Review, The Dodge, and New Ohio Review. Find more of his creative output at www.thaddevassie.com.