Every time I go back home, my mother <br />tells me I should begin to think now about what I will and will not want - before something happens and I have to. Each time <br /> <br />I refuse, as though somehow this is an argument we're having. After all, she and my father are still keeping the house they've kept for half a century. <br />But I do know why she insists. She has <br /> <br />already done a harder thing than I will <br />have to do. She was only eighteen - <br />her mother and father both dead - when it fell to her to break up the house, reduce <br /> <br />familiar rooms to a last order, a world <br />boxed and sealed. And while I know she would, she cannot keep me from the house emptied but for the pale ovals and rectangles <br /> <br />still nailed fast - cleaved to the walls where mirrors, portraits had hung - persistent, sourceless shadows.<br /><br />Claudia Emerson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/breaking-up-the-house/
