We Move to a House Where He Never Lived
Rent from DeepDyve- We Move to a House Where He Never Lived
Mom hangs strips of yellow roseson my walls, red curtains in the kitchen.I can hear my brother playingbasketball alone on the courtbehind the Garitanos' where Normastill lives with her parents, all of themgray-haired in the garden, beforethe house with Mary glowingin the dark. Every tree castsits leaves down in pools of shadow,fat maples, spades like the cardsmy mom turns over on the table,her eyes lit with luckwhen we play sometimes after dinner,waiting for my brother. [End Page 134] No one has died herebut we don't know what happenedin that corner by the furnacewhere you have to turn the light onwith a broom.
Just like they don't know—the people who came after usin the house we left behind.We didn't say, This is the roomwhere our father died.Or Maybe you don't know aboutthe other rooms. They open out from this onelike accordion folds. Run your handalong the bookshelf until it gives.They're windowless and yellow,the sticky bugs still livebeneath the bricks, and our toyshang on the walls like hammers.
Laura Read won the Floating Bridge Chapbook Award and has poems appearing in the Spoon River Poetry Review, New Ohio Review, Pank, and others. She lives in Spokane, Washington, with her husband and two sons.
