After your funeral, I walked through your house and saw the lumpy mattress, covered with faded sheets and cases. I looked in your clothes closet; A rack full of Salvation Army donations— Musty coats and spotted dresses, too dingy to be worn by anyone but you. A mohair sofa with red roses in your living room, covered in moldy plastic, passed on to you by grandma, awarded to me in your will. Old torn-up single-pane windows that you closed and shut with the change in weather; the fluctuation of your moods. I looked through your kitchen window at the people you once saw in the street; a sea of undulating row homes in the heat, each one telling a different story. A garage full of dusty memories, a rickety bike, I used to ride, a rusty Frigidaire from the fifties; termites eating through your foundation. The hedges grew wild in your yard, camouflaged with wildflowers and crabgrass, as I pictured you sitting on a folding chair, shielding your eyes with a menthol cigarette. I walked down your cracked stairs as you did many times without falling. Except on a snowy day in December, when you missed a step and never got up.
Mark is a former mental health therapist from Philadelphia who lives in Santa Barbara, California. He has a poetry chapbook, Magical Yogis, published by Prolific Press, and two upcoming books: Awkward Grace (Poetry), and The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories. His stories and poetry have appeared in Fiction on the Web, Ariel Chart, Amethyst Magazine, The Writing Disorder, among anthologies and podcasts. His website is Crow On The Wire.