Inheritance

Dried blue mist flower

and starved aster arranged

in the bowl on her table

among other household

offerings—pears, apples, candles.

A girl’s voice still reverberates

from the dining room walls. Mine.

Brushed across the veneer,

my sister’s pretty hands

run along battered oak. Mother

worries the curtains. In August

the sun dips down past the asphalt

horizon, each day earlier.

Quiet: except to savor

the milky breath of years

gone—grandfather clock, mirror

cutlery clacking the plates.

And this, the white space.