Sestina for the House We Sold
Saoirse DoyleWe could not agree on what to do with the house.My brother wanted the money. I wanted the key.Between us, in the middle, sat the tablewhere forty winters had been eaten, and the coldthat even in July came off the walls like a motherchecking the windows for something worth the keep.
There is a kind of love that looks like keep:the jar of buttons, the deed to the house,the cardigan that still smelled of our mothermonths after. My brother found the keyunder the mat where she'd left it, and the coldwent through us both. We sat back at the table.
You cannot split a childhood at a table.You cannot halve the things you meant to keep.He took the deed. I took the settled coldof knowing strangers now would own the house.He mailed me, without a note, the key.I have it still. I have it from our mother.
It does not open anything, our mother'sdoor being someone else's now. The tablewent to auction. Somewhere a stranger's keyturns easy in a lock we used to keepwarped shut all August. Somewhere our houseforgets us, room by room, and is not cold.
That's the part I can't forgive — not the cold,not the money, not the split. Our mother'swhole life is warming someone else's housetonight. Strangers are laughing at the table.And what did all my wanting-to-keep keep?A dead lock's useless, sentimental key.
So here is what I did with the key:not fling it in the sea, the grand and coldgesture. I did the smaller keep —a drawer, a cloth, the way she, our mother,kept everything that ever touched her table.I am, it turns out, my mother's house.
The key stays cold. I keep it for the motherwho set the table, shut the house to the cold.Call it not grief, then. Call it what we keep.