Old blue house

I put her things in boxes
load up the back
of the suv and drop it off at a second hand store again, and again, I give her stuff away.

There are books in  Hungarian and old poems and a wedding dress, and old county western tapes, gospel 45s and candle sticks and maps of Rome and crosses on beaded string. The old papers that were once important and orderly now heapped and bagged and ready for the dump and all of it smells sweet like candy and perfume, like her, like she still lives

here.

A strong young man is going to rent the place. Soon the place will smell like him and all the traces of her will be sweated and dicked and lived out

now, done with the haul I pause, and allow the grief to surface and take one last breath inside of her old blue house and now, close the door on the life that sustained and raised me