The House Eaters

1. My grapefruit tanned toothpicks bow above the five-day flattened spot in an olive shag carpet tracing grandpa Leo's blueprint, with one encapsulated toe – this is the femur, this is the head, this is the fist, the ring finger, the soul. I search for any blunt white quivering slivers of Caroline's purported fly fetuses. 2. Huddling behind the corpse of an old hospital bed, a framed photo smoke browned and wearing my toddler face, watches his children choke hushed, broken sentences this will be yours, my plate, separate the holiday china… an enigmatic language that hovers in smoke stretched rings to wilt upon the hallway bulb. 3. I am left the ceramic cygnet, and an ivory carved dromedary. These artifacts plucked from his porcelain menagerie that I decipher through dust fingerprints for one small inheritance of a memory. 4. Tomorrow, Aunt Rose puts price to his bibelots, the olive shag carpet, even cousin Amy's plastic horse, who was accidentally left to pasture on an afghan. A silver plated glass cage image of her past, she says she will whittle all of him, from the wooden house bones.