The stairs have their cadence, their dust
worn in by our boots, by the boots
of your grandmother.
Below, her tapestries are slowly rotting, her
garden growing over with weeds. The books
are falling to pieces.
I can see them from the stair before the last. I
can hear the ringing of the blast, the dust
settling on ten years
the emptiness of a dying house
the exhaustion in my bones.