POEM: Ode to the Rug on My Living Room Floor
An intimate look at new and old love, with inherited memories and objects giving life to new ones in nuanced but familiar ways. The poem, rich in texture and sound, allows the reader to situate themselves in the love of once-new things, now washed in the fondness and grief of time passed.
Ode to the Rug on My Living Room Floor
by Emily Sledge
except that it isn’t even in my living room
but an office in which we crust away at desks
separate as the inch deep footprints
nestled comfortably, permanently, on edges of sun bleached fibers
my man brought the rug in by himself
memories of a life etched before our time
crunching as it unfurled, the rug opened
a life for us to breathe in
a life through fiber from the soft pile
revealed by touches of oil, tears, food stains
it will remember each step by carbon
if nothing else remains
his warehouse boots, my spilled ink well, the candles that light our foyer
breeding an industrial gourmand
the mingled scents moaning as if to say
I’ve been expecting you…come on in
drool of my lover’s mother
she crawled on our inherited rug
an infant with the curiosity of our cats
whose litter litters the outskirts of this dirt-haven
I sat in the corner of the aged rug
where he loved me the night we first moved in
stared into the keyhole of our bathroom door
to where I wished we had
my splintered ovary leaked atop wool flowers
couldn’t move, felt like I’d been chained to a radiator
all night the sounds of the shower underwritten
by the light prose of his body
I imagined myself as the hoarfrost on the inoperable window
its clouded glass melting with the steam off skin
the condensation reached the inner wool of my ears with a whisper
you can make this place clean
Emily Sledge is a born and bred bluegrass poet and screenwriter. She resides in Kentucky and is currently a graduate student at the University of Louisville.
