Winning Poem, 2025 Poems About Work Contest: No Vacancy, Carla Galdo

Carla Galdo is a poet and essayist from Virginia. She has written for Humanum, Dappled Things, Well-Read Mom, Modern Age, and others.

            No Vacancy

So much depends
upon the missing
puzzle piece that
I spied before
the vacuum sucked
it up into
its cavernous
gray gut. Did it
jump ship like Jonah,
leap from the table
to dodge its fate,
or did a child
just nudge it down?
I’ll never know—
but as I skim
the hardwood floors,
this much I do—
we want to snap
that final bit
snug with its mate,
to seal the ragged
perimeter,
turn scattered swirls
of blue and green
from chaos to
a patterned sense.
We want to rest
lacuna-free
with our cardboard
conundrums solved
for just a day
at least. I say
so much depends
on this one piece,
for even in
this broken world
where so much lurks
undone, we long
for perfect things.