3 GRACE COURT WEST

I imagine a child who has swallowed up his parents too soon... .

Julia Kristeva

It's never too soon to think of the world

without them, and now you've done it.

The quiet has set in after the last

mouthful, and the house is all yours.

No safety rail at the cellar stairs,

the icebox packed with a week's worth

of food-popsicles, bologna, Hi C.

The TV on its cart. You finish your meal

at the formica table in a stillness

so complete you hear the house start

to talk in a dry, low-pitched language

you hadn't noticed before. You move

to the dining room, its wood panelling,

the schrank, and at the head

of the table, whose leaf you scribbled

your name on in crayon, on the underside,

you hear the quick sounds of settling

from the black-tiled bathroom

where they washed their big bodies

in the spray. There is nothing

to do now but listen-not to the piano,

certainly not to the doorbell,

not even to the maidenhair fern

on the windowsill that might not

have figured it out, but to the hardwood floor

and the painted stucco, the green shutters

with the slices of half moons, none of them

accusing, just knowing it all, waiting

for you now, for something to happen.

And at this quiet instant, in the stare

of the dust left to itself in corners

of the kitchen, as you think about a taxi

taking you all the way to Great Adventure,

they appear in your vision, shadowy

in the vestibule, sprinkling their fine

layer of knowledge over the furniture.

And in their sight, which you thought

you were out of for good, you begin

to add up the sums of what's been lost.