Mortgages

The starter home was a hospital,
And so, too, was the finisher home,
A quirk of family history,

Born in a hospital converted
To condos, one purchased once retired,
Died there, at home in bed, in a room

Once part of the maternity ward.
Frankly, most Americans those days
Breathed their first and last in hospitals,

So not so far off the twentieth-
Century norm. Closure. Everyone
By the next century craved closure,

But closure’s only for spectators,
Readers of novels, survivors, those
Who didn’t end, who haven’t yet died.

Inside, there’s no more view from outside.
That twentieth-century body,
1904 to 1990,

Found dead in bed on New Year’s morning,
Didn’t know from closure, couldn’t have.
Wasn’t finisher. Wasn’t starter.