By Dave Nash

Beginning with those hedges, gnarled like her hands,
branches of veins spreading out, setting the house apart.

The front porch where we used to sit on humid nights,
root beer floats, waiting for the next bolt to crash into the valley.

Inside, the banister poses a question – up or down?
It posed a question to her too.

Every night she’d count the stairs she had to climb one at a time –
all thirteen. How many trips upstairs did she have left?

The downstairs is too white paint and the black black
trim feels explicit in the room's nakedness.

Gone are the Davenport, the coffee table, the portrait of her
husband who welcomed visitors with his countenance.

Do the dead stick around repainted walls or
do they take off like smuggled icons for the next sanctuary?

The kitchen hadn’t changed. The paisley green tiles match
the avocado oven with the bread warmer and broiler.

She’d get up early to make me oatmeal raisin
from her bedroom caught the morning sun.

She’d make grapefruit too, brown sugar-crusted,
baked in that oven. One half for me, one for her.

Other bedrooms were no one’s and everyone’s. Four
generations holidays, birthdays, summer vacations.

The last picture opens to the deck, over the backyard
wild berries creeping into the kept garden, spreading

down from the mountain, branching out, reaching
for the afternoon sun, ripening its fruit.

Dave Nash, a writer from New Jersey, has been longlisted for the Wigleaf 50 and his work appears in places like The South Florida Poetry Journal, Bulb Culture Collective, and The Hooghly Review.