Someone walks from the Salvation Army

with an armload of my grandfather's suits.

The new tenant settles into the old house,

paints the walls burgundy, burns the sour curtains.

A young mother speaks into a secondhand phone,

replaces it in the cradle, forgets who she wanted to call.

My grandparent's last car has slipped permanently

into neutral, has nightmares of mulberries and starlings.

Corn volunteers in the broken alley.

The pear tree collapses under the weight of its fruit.

I wake thick with their absence,

face like a soft apple.

In the garage a threadbare divan I once wanted

is slowly unstuffed by mice. I seal the loss up tight,

use the shadows to slipcover

the lives they all but owned.