(clean)

I hope I die
when the cupboards
are clean,
not today –
decades hence.
Still, at their
worst, I take
a certain pride
in leaving a
pretty tidy life.
Not the kind
with floors &
floors of the house
stuffed & crammed
with unnamed secrets.
The only secrets
I have held
were in my heart
& what they were
I’m not sure
I could say
even now.

Some people
don’t care
what is found
out when
they are gone.
But I do.
Not so much
what is known
as how it’s
treated when
I am not here
to ferry it
about in life.
The way they
read the uncle’s
love letters
which he had
saved.
I hope that I
have time
to dispense
of things as I
see fit,
or despose of them
altogether
Although
I haven’t any love letters
to worry about.
To sad a fact
to think about.

A woman I know
does, and thinks
it best
her grown sons
not walk into
that hidden room
where her life
lived before
their birth.

Sometimes
I wonder
if there might be
someone I will
never meet,
who will want
to know me.
Finding my journals
in some dusty box,
perhaps my favorite
pen down at the
bottom,
all dried out.

9/5/99