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