Now that they're gone, do they know
our home for forty years is on the block?
That the blue walls lacquered with nicotine
now wear a new bride's white and gleam like silk?
That the cherry table and china hutch,
and the gilt-rimmed mirror above the buffet
that watched Christmas mornings and late-night fights
like a shutterless lens -- that all these fixtures
of our family's time are now long-gone: sold off
to strangers, shut up in storage, or hauled away
for nothing?
And can they sense, my last night here,
I'm trying to sleep on their bedroom floor, the same
place they loved and suffered and died -- but the full moon
is glowing through the blinds like a porch light left on,

to guide somebody safely home.

First appeared in Paintbrush 27 (200-2001).