Before
we cleaned out
Yia Yia’s apartment,
Mother said
not to remember the dead
in sum. That if we did,
we’d only ever be remembered
in our shame and guilt.
Paramedics found the body
in her favorite armchair:
fleur-de-lis on worn blue
fabric with the stuffing torn
out of armrest peepholes.
In the cabinets over the stove,
we find canned soups
with expiration dates
of the last presidency;
and missing from their lacquered rack,
pawned silver spoons she sold
to keep the teapot whistling.
I return the landline
to its cornflower hook—
and organize numerical
languages on trifold matte.
My brother holds framed
renderings of the Cape house,
sold on a low bid, when
the stonemason calls
and asks how we’d like to pay.
Matt Vekakis is an MFA student in poetry at the University of Florida. Their recent work has appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Atlanta Review, Appalachian Review, Welter, and Up the Staircase Quarterly. Matt serves as EIC of The Lunch Break Zine—the literary companion of Out to Lunch Records.