My Mother’s Friend’s Dead Mother’s House is For Sale.

My mother’s friend’s dead mother’s

house is for sale.

Mom reminisces as we drive by

vague memories

of a simple bungalow

And then she is gone and I –

I’m accompanied by a young woman on the doorstep.

Her features flicker and change

A circus of people traipses across her visage

She beckons me enter.

Close the door, she urges,

Before the night comes in.

The inside is larger than the outside.

Are you in the market?

The market for what?

The market for a house.

She shows me around.

The tour is quick.

A single golden room,

all necessary rooms combined.

The basement? A brisk query.

Down here the ceiling rises only to my hip.

We crawl around like moles.

Still, there is a sofa with no legs

for solitary reposing.

Outside? She is flighty and impatient.

The house backs onto a steep, stony river.

I close the door behind me

and admire the deafening turbulence.

But when I turn the house is gone.

Well, it’s not gone gone.

It is a ruin, a shambles,

grey stone rubble and garbage.

The woman is amongst it like a magpie.

You closed the door, she accuses me weakly,

and now the spirits cannot roam.

But the night, I argue, you said the night –

The photos don’t have to be accurate, she cries,

as if crumbling under interrogation.

You don’t have to show what the house is

Only what it could be.

And now I know that she is dead.

When I step inside the walls, it is whole and golden again.

See? She says breathlessly. So much potential.

I tell her I have to go.

But you haven’t seen the upstairs!

She is desperate now, her face always in motion.

The door to upstairs is black.

When she opens it, all is black inside.

A whooshing scream, a sucking yowl –

she smiles feverishly at me.

I can’t, I insist.

I’m afraid you’ll keep me up there forever.

(I’ve never been so honest,

nor so abrupt,

to a single person

whom I didn’t want to disappoint)

I turn and leave.

The front door opens seamlessly.

Mom is waiting in the car –

She smiles and waves.

The sunlight is dappled and grand.

I’ve never been so happy to see her in my life.

But then

she freezes.

Goes grey.

Her eyes

they shutter

and shift

and fixate

on something

behind me.

They widen.

And then,

She drives away.