Someday you will die and strangers will come into your home
They will buy your lace wedding dress,
your polished chess set,
the stained-glass window of a swan flanked by red lilies.
Someday I’ll walk through your home
and look through the piles of
pictures you took of Rainier Beer,
a futuristic hotel lobby from the 1970s,
the portrait of a mother and her
three grown daughters smiling at her.
I will buy your Tibetan rice paper drawing
the one in teal ink of monks rowing a large
wooden boat, temples in the background.
I’ll be the only one to notice the still intact
geode and take it home.
When I walk your hallways, I’ll feel
the energy of your movement, eating
alone in front of the tv surrounded
by family pictures on wood paneling.
I’ll sense how you busied yourself
woodworking in the cluttered garage
as you tried not to be buried by grief
of grown children and passed partners.
I will hear your home’s silence,
imagine your molecules imbedded in the sofa,
touch your lingering in the carpet and walls.
You will be in a corner watching me
take in what I can’t buy.
Your former possessions will be honored in
my possession, until
strangers walk through my home.
- © Jennifer Rodrigues 2023
Jennifer McKeen Rodrigues currently lives on the sacred Powhatan land of Fairfax, VA. She has been published as a poet and/or photographer in The Muleskinner Journal, tinyfrights, Amethyst Review, & The Martello.
2 comments:
Beautiful words. I feel this.
So beautiful and anyone who has had a similar experience will appreciate how you have so beautifully described those emotions.
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