My Aunt, the Spinster

She says all the good ones
are either married, paralyzed, or gay.
So she turns off the red lantern, uses her high heels as garden tools
and fits the negligee to the neighbor's lawn gnomes.
The KY she keeps
for the occasional rusty bolt.

She walks out of the battle with Gravity
Lets it claim the prize of her body
She drops the bloodied weapons of spandex and underwire
and stretches for comfort, not calistenics

The days once filled to the gills with a pushing lonely Empty
now open their arms and say:
"We've been waiting for you!
Have books, have tea, have an account with Netflix..
This ragamuffin cat?
Name him Prince.
No more frog-kissing days for you, lady."

The grocery stores and the art stores
no longer assume a Mrs. prefix
Her position is obvious
Maybe it's the earth-tone cotton clothes that swaddle her curves
in a soft breath of lavender,
or the bits of pulled weeds still clinging to her heavy graying braids.
Or perhaps clerks just learn from experience
that no married woman makes dinner
of artichokes, irish butter and a bottle of Ravenswood zinfindel.
Nor would she have the time to wait
for oil paints to dry.
Maybe they imagine a rainbow sticker on the bumber of her Suburu.

When she takes me to the cafe where they've hung her paintings
and I spill out my dreadfully dire love woes
She merely shrugs her shoulders,
grins wider than a catholic womb,
and with a chuckling mouth full of buttered muffin says:
"Honey, even with all the mayonaise in the world you can't make chicken salad
out of chicken shit."

My Aunt- My big round beautiful moon-
You float into family functions
face loaded with laughter
arms loaded with chocolate and home-grown flowers
And all the nieces and nephews crowd about you like presents
around a christmas tree.

And the kitchen-weary Mother and Sisters
who huddle in worry
wringing their potato-peeled hands
every year
whisper:
"Poor dear. I just can't BEAR to think of her
out there
all alone."