A Little Yellow House in New Orleans

There is a little house on a quiet street

in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

The woman inside has four children, three of whom

she can wrap up tightly in her arms.

The fourth child lives only in her heart, tucked away

with her grandmother’s oatmeal cookies and

that man who loved her in her 20’s.

At night she stands out on her balcony,

listening to the sounds of jazz from the musicians

on the corner and breathing in the scent

of lilacs in the flower pot next to her.

She wonders about that man who loved her once.

Her friend Sally swore he became a dentist,

but she prefers to think of him as a pirate

sailing around the Caribbean coast,

eating fried plantains and licking sugar cane

off the fingers of beautiful women.

She doesn’t know what became of the girl she once was.

She only knows that jazz is the sound of longing

and yellow is the color of satisfaction.

Together they chase each other through her dreams,

and she wonders, as she goes back inside

to tuck her children in for the night,

which one she wants to win.