Clearing
This laden house of my childhood
is emptying.
I say goodbye to the never-updated kitchen,
no more playing Sorry at the round table
where my mother always picked green, my father red,
and my favorite was blue, and they always let me win;
my bedroom, faded Rod Stewart poster gone,
where my tenth-grade boyfriend broke up with me
after a month while I listened, stunned,
on the princess phone I’d nagged so hard to get;
the hallway with its worn wooden floors
that someone else will refinish
someday;
the stairs my father could finally
no longer climb.
Now only virginal curtains remain,
whitely breathing, at open windows
in bare rooms. The spacious silence
surprises me. The house and I
seem lighter, infinitely
open-armed.
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Elizabeth L. Merrick’s poems have appeared in journals including Amethyst Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Muddy River Poetry Review, and Rue Scribe. She has also authored many scientific research publications and a guidebook on historic house museums. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 