Empty House

Each time I went back to see Belle’s house after she died,

I always found something significant to her memory

I found that others had been there, and the beds

were tumbled and rumpled, then gone

One dresser was marked with adhesive tape

and someone had written in schoolteacher script, Eloise.

Now who was that, I thought, it was Aunt Bunchie,

dead before her mother was, and so the dresser

was for my cousin. I found the little bobble-headed

Chinese children with magnets in their lips

a provocative plaster mammy notepad holder

Grannie’s seasoned pie pans, her crockery mixing bowls