Keep and Give Away: Poems

Selling My Mother’s House

32 Selling My Mother’s House This is my last night.To lie here on a mattress on the floor is to beg, like a child, for one more hour. Every door is a lesson in leaving. The house is a story told in three days of measuring worth: keep her silver, the whatnot, cedar chest, homemade cradle. Throw out old Christmas cards. Free the den doorknob of all those rubber bands. Give away the sheets, blender, and green plaid sofa. Need has nothing to do with it. The house is an argument of echoes and silence.A missing mantel clock articulates the years. I brush my teeth to the sound of a waterfall, wipe my mouth on an old washcloth, what’s left of her linens. 33 I know why children put off sleep, ask for juice before bed. On their bedroom wall just above where the nightstand used to be, a dark spot framed in faith. How she got up one August night and sprayed a larger and larger circle to save him from a mosquito droning its song between them and the peace of sleep. How he ducked under cover. How this accidental art, what was once mist, barely there, and far from beauty, is the only sign left. ...