She moves like a dragonfly—
filling silences with humming.
Never still for long, my lively neighbor
chases new ventures, mid-sentence.

To her, I’m one of the naive rebels—
oblivious to how the world bends us into shape.
She vows to find me the worst husband.
I laugh and lead her down another tangent.

“A woman cannot survive alone,” she says
over frivolous cups of steaming tea—
the one-woman army
who can soothe any ache with her zest.

One day, she seeks guidance on renovation.
The next, she tears her house down
making room for a shrine.
I think it’s overkill—
They say she’s breathing life into a dream.

Cracked walls razed, an identity erased.
She darts tirelessly beneath the sun.
No man to say, “Let me handle this.”
No child to plead, “Come home, mum.”

The hammering and rubble wear on me.
Could she not have just painted it new?
I challenge her, and she fires back:
“Your home could use some fixing too.”

I rearrange furniture when rooms feel dull.
She demolishes decades of memory.
For a seventy-something childless widow—
the dust now rises like a citadel,
lifted by defiant, brittle bones.

She rests now where she once labored,
still humming through the silence.
And I—stand in newfound reverence,
longing for a home so wholly mine

it would end me to leave it.