Moss headed and sleepy, my children this morning. Wearing toast crumbs, wearing sweat pants and fall coats from the supermarket. Are we doing alright? Fresh haircuts and pared nails the measure of my attention on them. Are we doing alright? Lessons and birthday parties, new toys and yard sales. I try for an hour to collect loonies and toonies from neighbours then give it all away. All free. Instead I sit in a yard sale rocking chair, the one I nursed my babies in, the one I will eventually give away without a sentimental look back, the one I will eventually miss when the day is quiet and rainy and I’m nostalgic, and I sit there and read a new book of poetry. My hand waves everything away, all free, I say in between stanzas. Take it. It’s yours. There’s a little jam jar of change and five-dollar bills on the chair on the porch. It’s enough. Are we doing alright? Free. It’s a skillet. Very fancy. Aga. Well that’s a company that makes high-end ovens. Princess Diana had one. Linda McCartney. Take it. Free. Are we doing alright? I clear out, as if my principle aim is to live in an empty house with a beeswax candle and a laptop. The children rush by on scooters, hand delivering homemade cookies—butterscotch—and store bought lemonade in tiny waxy cups. They’ve made signs on yellow construction paper. Do I imagine that the complex feels cleaner and lighter and happier with all of this gone from our basements and closets? I don’t imagine it. It does feel lighter, freed of the threads silken and strong, tying us to these objects. I read a poem I could not have written. It wakes me and is a kind of mirror. I do not sell mirrors this day, but other people do. Between stanzas I look up to see a man holding a mirror with a spray painted frame, gold. He’s looking into the mirror, holding it out from himself. His wife has two carnival masks. She holds one, green and festooned with feathers, over her eyes, the ribbons drip. She holds the other, black and gold. She is instantly transformed into a harlequin. She doesn’t look into the mirror the man is holding, but she feels that they fit and she buys them both. Two masks. One mirror.