MANSION

 

Fifty-two years later I still dream

of the house where I grew up, its pitched

roof, mock Tudor gables and wainscoted walls.

 

Thick spring-green shag suffocated

fine oak floors; heavy yellow brocade humiliated

the view of Lake Michigan with her tormented

 

moods. Given life and left to figure it out,

we well-off, at-risk children fostered avoidance,

we seized what space we could for ourselves

 

which, despite its size, was never enough.

Deprived of protection, we stashed secrets

in walk-in closets and yawning attic

 

annexes, hid hopes inside the drafty shafts

of disabled dumbwaiters. Unschooled

in the ways of rage, brothers became

 

autodidacts of abuse. Pleas and protests echoed

off leaded stained glass and high-beamed ceilings.

Foreboding closed my throat like the swinging door

 

between kitchen and formal dining room where I hid

to cry. Bedrooms were no barrier to the threat

of absence. Bruises barely hinted at the depth of harm.

 

My older sister modeled love in the updated kitchen

where orange-and-yellow daisy wallpaper lied

about the dangers lurking upstairs. I watched her feed

 

our Great Danes ground beef cooked hot and sizzling

mixed into kibble with her bare hands, distributing pink

juice evenly, marbled linoleum floor slick with drool.

 

Where she learned to nurture, I cannot say. She became

a mother whose grown children still break her heart

in big and small ways every day. I remain childless

 

by choice, unpartnered by preference, a student

of my upbringing. But so was she. Maybe our education

doesn’t explain her grief-laden choices any more

 

than my own. My black lab and I are the same

age in dog years, her perfect love guaranteed

to leave me before I am ready. Every day

 

she teaches me that the space that is mine to fill

is small indeed, and this is good news,

though I have yet to claim it.