By Ande Finley

Sweet dark graces me with grief
to mark the bits slipping into strange hands –
the champagne shades, the old chipped dresser,
the table with the children’s scars.
In the night, I walk the house
with its gaping windows and rooms filling
with boxes and bags, cases labeled
with history and the tiny details
woven into so many lives.

Help me memorize
the flicker of ash leaves
on the white wall that has lost its form,
the ash we planted
that long ago spring, blooming now
in the last spring that it will be our ash, our wall, our stories
embedded in its plaster no matter what color it becomes.

The empty house morphs into a shell
of clean cold beige –
erase the hole where you put
your hand through and
the step where everyone tripped,
pull up the ugly carpet
in the secret places where we loved,
uproot the old apple tree,
sand out the nicks and gashes of a family
that slammed doors and cried
and celebrated and
let me gather all my ghosts
to dance me out the door.