EVENING IN THE ABANDONED HOUSE

You are drinking tepid tea in the abandoned house.
The cup you put to your lips is cracked like all the windows.

No coats in closets, no wood in the fireplace.
The evening is predictably cold. 

Mold coats the north wall where the sun never shone.
Footprints, not yours, erase dust on the rug.

You don’t see anyone in the cloudy mirror.
Are you cursed or relieved to be here, 

where nothing ever ended, especially in your mind as a child?
Your mind now, this evening, is as empty as this house.

Through your shoes you feel the threat of the near-to-collapse floor.
The house’s previous inhabitants gather, thirsty.

You sip from the almost empty cup as they examine you,
wondering why you won’t leave.  

Claudia M. Stanek’s work has been turned into a libretto, been part of an art exhibition, and been translated into Polish. She is the author of the chapbooks Language You Refuse to Learn (BHP, 2014) and Beneath Occluded Shine(FLP, 2025). Her poems appear in Cutleaf, Ekstasis, Solum, Book of Matches, and Atticus Review. Claudia was awarded a Writer’s Residency in Bialystok, Poland.  She holds an MFA from Bennington College. After a lifetime in the frozen tundra of Western New York, Claudia now lives in East Tennessee with her elderly dogs, where she also rescues the occasional overheated hummingbird.