Patricia Whiting Fine Arts

I can still picture her
standing outside the screen door
to my apartment,
waiting to utter the words
she has no doubt practiced
all the way over
in the car.

I’m 40–
too old for lectures
on morality.
She’s 70
and five feet tall.

She wouldn’t have used
an expression like
“living in sin”
anyway.
I don’t even know
if she believed in sin.

After she’d said it
I wasn’t allowed to reply.

Our lives went on
as always,
except for the missing one
and the unwelcome one.

I go to open the screen door
and let her in,
and she says it.
“I have just one thing to say:
I do not approve.”