Payment

Kyle and Deanna’s thirty-year mortgage

Would be, according to schedule, paid off

This year. Will it be? Do they still live there?

You only ask since thirty years ago

You sat in a meeting one afternoon

Next to Kyle, making chit-chat, and he said

It was trippy to have bought their first house

Because when they were signing the papers

He realized that the thirty-year mortgage

Meant he’d be sixty-seven by the time

It was done. Weighty thought for him and you

Who was several years younger, barely hired

To the same position he’d held for years

And in no position to a buy a house

Yet. A year later, he and Deanna

Had a daughter. The last time you saw them,

Not quite a decade later, they were still

Living in the same little bungalow,

Dark but rather charming, with hardwood floors

And large porch, in a decent neighborhood.

Their daughter was a quiet, spindly girl.

Kyle was still alive a few years ago,

Working in the same place on the same things,

According to an old friend on the phone.

You forgot to ask about Deanna

Or their daughter, who would now be the age

You were the afternoon Kyle leaned over

And said, It was weird when I realized

I’d be paying until sixty-seven,

Grinning and shaking his slightly gray head.