Cardboard boxes stacked high
as the kitchen window, their open wings only fit
for the kid to fly past the original lino floor,
back when I could have been a pilot, past
long gone wall tiles grubby
with patterns of stubby trees;
generations of our stew ions
enriching the paintwork.
Still, the next people will have their work cut out
to remove stains we leave behind,
our aroma from the brick, memory from mortar.
Pity — you had finally found
a satisfactory carpet,
royal blue, you insisted, deep weave
of everything you could want
for a living room, not worrying now
that thundering feet would wear it patchy
on the stairs, or radioactive
with unsupervised art.
A dining room table meant for dining, too,
not a nest for printouts, accounts to be
totted through as best you could; ravel
puzzled out to beat the squeeze
of university fees, promising
I would someday buy you a Volvo, pity.
Crates of shoes, clothes for charity,
television I fixed up
for the two channels you still watched,
jaundiced cookery books,
net curtains, tangle of regret.
Why did you allow things to accumulate
when we’re only going to get rid of them anyway?