Something We're

All ​Built To Do

​

The house has been practicing
how to lose us for years.

First, the hallway clock stopped
remembering the hour.
Then the kitchen chair
began wobbling on one leg,
unsure whether it still
belonged here.

The wallpaper near our back door
peeled itself back and away in thin curls,
slowly revealing what had always been underneath.

Melancholy ages you ways no one can see.
Calls for weathers unknown to our shores.
Named itself something that happens when
enough seasons pass through a place.

I think the house knew, though.
Felt us changing before we did.
Felt my grandmother’s hands grow rare
against each and every wall.
Heard my mother’s footsteps wear
different paths across the floor.
Watched me stand in my childhood bedroom,
staring as if I were already gone.

Sometimes I walk through the rooms
and caress everything I can reach.
The doorframe marked with pencil lines,
the window latch that sticks in sweet July heat,
the cupboard handle polished smooth
by decades of hands.

Not because these things will remember me,
but because I am terrified of forgetting them.

One day someone else will stand in this kitchen.
Someone who never heard our coffee pot
sputter awake before dawn.
A soul who doesn’t know which floorboard
complains outside the bedroom door.
Someone who will open the cabinets
without realizing they are touching a history.

​

And the house will let them.

The house will survive all of us,
the part I cannot forgive.
That, after all our living,
our laughter trapped in the walls,
our fingerprints pressed into paint,
the windows will still gather sunlight,
the roof will still shoulder snow…

​

…and the rooms will learn
how to hold another family
just as gently.

Like letting go was something
we’re all built to do.

​