You’d think she wasn’t coming back, 
the way she dries the last breakfast dish
as the taxi pulls up and honks.

Did it like she was fitting things together,
Like the house was a big puzzle, and she was
Snapping down one last piece
So she could forget about it,

You know---the way women do

Make your own welcome home, 
her mom used to say.

And if the flight goes down, everyone will say
all those nice things about her on the news.

But that’s not the point, she’d swear if you asked. 

And you might...
You might ask if all this work was for the neighbors,
Or for the reporters,
Or for the relatives,
Or for you

Because that carpet is so clean it’s shouting,
Like it’s trying to tell you something.

But if I were you, I wouldn’t trust it. I mean, look around.
It’s too much like a magazine...no fingerprints, 
no sign of a struggle, and that couch...

She wants you to think it’s Martha Stewart,
but watch as she punches the last pillow in place:
it’s more like Al Capone, like tying up loose ends.

So that you will see this house,
with the mail on hold, porch light on autopilot,
everything unplugged, and think this must be
a nice lady

Because she makes her getaways clean.
No dusty drapes calling her back like a witness.
Nobody even suspecting that she was out to lose ‘em---
the small timers and the bookkeepers,
the shaking heads the papers would call her loved ones.

What she’s after is the kind of thing that scares nice ladies.

She’s out to do her own dirty work---
Line a bar with tall bottles like cut glass alibis,
Turn some cabana boys into cabana men.

Steal herself a week of secrets worth keeping,
Stay until she has what she needs,
until she can go back on her own terms.

This was the plan all along, just like her mother said:

Leave a house right, and you come back to a fresh start.
Like a whole new life....

And if you saw her walking back up the drive,
Looking out through your parted curtains and spread blinds,
You might wonder what stories that suitcase was carrying,
But it knows no one likes a snitch.

She turns the key, hears the soft click,
like a hammer lowered without firing, a trigger eased back down.
A sound that puts an end to it, punctuates, declares:

It’s me. I’m back.

I’m home.