New Poetry by Jennifer Rodrigues

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.