NANNY’S HOUSE WAS EMPTY

 

Nanny's house was empty,

                                                    totally void,

and it was

strange

             because I had been there

             during the summer;

             when she was dead, Grampy

             was in the home, and

the house

they'd spent thirty years in

had to be

                          cleaned out

so it could be put on the market.

 

I was there

             on the third floor; ninety-seven degrees

             mothball stink and dust, thick like

                                       the skull

             of the ex-girlfriend helping me.

 

I recall the rafters in the attic

                                       packed

                                                    full,

the floors laid out with dusty comforters and lamps,

every closet teaming with clothes,

shelves crammed with books, magazines, notepads, papers,

old check stubs, sewing kits and old pictures.

            

After five years, thirty years, sixty years,

                          FOREVER,

all the possessions saved for and acquired;

             the comfortable sofas

             the new cars and clothes

             the expensive stereos, CD, DVD–

all that shit,

                                       is left to collect dust

                                       and be sold off,

                                       thrown out,

                                       or divided up

                                       and argued over amongst kin,

leaving an empty house

to be filled by the next family

             of materialistic dreamers.

 

As Heidi and I finally reversed down

the steep driveway,

                          away from the house,

I felt lucky

to be with someone who said

she would be happy

                          living in a box,

                          as long as it’s with me.

Ryan McLellan is a poet and English teacher at Timberlane Regional High School in Plaistow, New Hampshire. He has been published in Plymouth State University's The Centripetal, The Vagina Dialogues, and The Clock.  He lives in Exeter, writes all around New Hampshire, and wishes to thank everyone he has come across for his inspirations.

Dance to Death, Issue III

©2008 Sorrowland Press and all respective artists within.