I can type here in the kitchen:
the only neutral room,
though the house is empty.
Even now, as I sort through the things
of this house I grew up in,
knowing the house must be sold
due to extreme financial negligence,
I understand how it got so bad.
After my father’s death of lung cancer,
we three children were left
to raise ourselves in some way.
My mother’s grief was too great.
I forgive her everything.
Her house, a shrine of weakness,
is a beacon of neglect.
I forgive her absence during our childhood,
her drinking,
her abusiveness,
her volatility:
All of it stemmed in some way
from an irrecoverable grief.