Thrown for a loop
(another failed romance)
left uneasy
I’d planned to retire early anyway
(I hadn’t planned to move)
but 30 years in California I thought, just go
That I went in the direction of the failure was coincidence
few dared ask if I moved to Austin because of him
(he lives in Houston)
I bought a place
(first time homeowner at 62!)
I didn’t intend to stay
so long
in Texas
(why buy?)
then COVID made selling moving finding a place to live
difficult
(scary)
then vaccines
Austin prices balloon
I land in New Mexico
(grew up here; home? don’t know)
13 days until the lease on my sublet ends
I have no plan
(I’m 68; I do have a will)
I have been a lot of ages
but have not
(yet)
found the number that
settles things
Jane Hammons taught writing at UC Berkeley for many years before returning home to the Southwest. Her writing appears in numerous magazines and anthologies: Alaska Quarterly Review, Contrary Magazine, Southwestern American Literature, Hint Fiction (W.W.W. Norton), The Maternal is Political (Seal Press), and Selected Memories (Hippocampus Press). She lives in New Mexico and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.