billy 2

billy’s house

in the background there are voices
angry voices.
I can’t make out what is being said
but it sounds unpleasant. There is shrillness,
bitterness, yelling
and I decide not to knock. As I walk away
I hear a bang against the wall.

On another day, entering Billy’s house
I was greeted by strange, defiant smells.
the house was messy, strewn, chaotic
dishes piled and anger collecting in the corners.
the basement was oily and musty, unfinished long ago.
But it was cool in the summer, so what.
Billy and I would rummage through stuff
an archeology of secrets and shadows
adult ways looming.
I dreaded when someone would come home –
Billy’s father in his uniform, his mother in her stress
Or worse, his brother – wild and caged in the house
and who bit.

They are all dead now.

At funerals I still sense the smell of Billy’s house.
Coffins remind me of kitchen stains,
of worn lint filled carpets, oil smelling basements
and piled dishes.
All the flotsam of death, all the debris of a life
lived fully perhaps.

A life next door to mine.


return to totem poems