oh geez
the old woman says but
they don't get out of the way
she adds frowning
standing outside the walmart
looking down on a seagull its
head smashed, smeared red
across the white lined asphalt

ice salt like silt settles
in layers on broken wax
candles cards and plastic flowers
photos faded in the sun all
piled on a corner where
two months ago
a boy died by mistake

she died in the yard
with a wrench in her hand
and her daughter died in the garage.
her sister gets oranges
in the mail each december
and i wonder if she can eat them

sorting through her christmas decorations in the garage
someone triggers a music box and it chimes
fragile and artificial.
and when the last notes slow
and the last note rings it hangs in the air
like dust in sunlight
until the low hum of the fluorescent lights
sweeps it away

he looked like he was stargazing
the way one knee was bent
lying there on his back his
eyes straight up.
and he looked like he was laughing
the way his chest shuddered and rattled
chuckling like
there was a joke up in the clouds.

lights start flashing
white and yellow and red
when the bumper caves over the street
sign bending
rolling down the grassy slope
still flashing
white and yellow and red.
the rain runs
down the windows shattered
cloaks the shaking inside
as it rolls down to stop.

the disdain for her mother
leaches into the storage room
and saturates
all this can go
take it all she tells the junkman
and she waves the air away.
chairs and tables and piles
of turned wood limbs for
furniture
prepared but unattached and
the old man's rusted tools fill a box truck
in the driveway
until the basement floor is a mangled checkerboard
of clean rectangles untouched
by the dust that settled
since he died.
upstairs where she won't get
in the way
the old woman bends in half
lifting planks by one end.
her knuckles arched and white
she tries to turn the front steps
into a ramp