Family Visit
Dark-tied and properly suited,
back at my in-laws’ place, I’m here
to make sure the flat is intact.
The same portraits are standing guard
and the same piano keys grin
with their yellowed teeth. Rosaries
lay coiled on a sunlit table
like dozing, sated rattlesnakes.
It’s time to rehearse my report.
Everything’s still where your mother
kept it. I lock up and head home,
humming fiercely to wrestle off
the creeping, ransacking silence.
*Matthew Stewart blogs at http://roguestrands.blogspot.com. Happenstance Press have recently published his pamphlet collection, Inventing Truth.