The witness of rooms

The Witness of Rooms

The heart of our family was the dining room
more than the tight kitchen
with its claustrophobia of cupboards
woodbox on wheels, tilting-out flour bin
that hid desperate-legged beetles
and gas stove whose oven POOF!
terrified me when I was eight.

The dining room had the fridge
and the wood table squeak-stretched to fit eleven.
Beside it sat the bench for four brothers
squished in a row–-the bench where I swayed organ
when we pretended church, the bench I left
seconds before the plaster
crashed from the ceiling
leaving a hole the shape of Africa.

The living room was off the dining room
our house’s holy of holies
cold, and kept tidy for company
though it had the piano
so I was allowed in to practice.
Its cracked north wall showed off Mom’s clever
camouflaging wallpaper vine
its south had a bay window
that nooked ancient plants
under panes of tinted gold and rosy.
There was also a green stuffed chair
and a matching couch
from where, on sick days
I watched the flowers in the curtains
stare at me, then whisper to each other.

That house has another room now
–-one my brother and his wife added
to watch TV and store stuff.
On the other side of the kitchen and two steps down
it has glass doors that gaze
onto an endless field.
They had lately moved into it a hospital bed.
I visit on the weekend of the memorial:
the bed is gone now.
I study the red walls
the only ones in this old house
to have witnessed such a thing.
They give nothing away.

© 2011 by Violet Nesdoly

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Two years ago today (January 25, 2011) my brother passed away after a several-year battle with cancer. He died in the farmhouse where we grew up. In this personal poem, I recall some of the scenes the walls in that farmhouse have witnessed. What would be the memories of the walls in your house?

This poem is part of Poetry Friday, hosted this week by Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference.