Estate Sale

You came to Red Robin
for the never-ending fries

but you’re nowhere near
hungry. You could vomit actually

at the thought of strangers
ransacking the house, picking

his blues records, his tools,
stacks of his half-read books,

operating the electric bed
where you clasped his face

and kissed his lips
and hummed “All for the Best”

after which he wilted
to just a body with a mouth.

When you’re done here
you’ll return, half your life

sold. An emptiness
will try to consume you.

Birds will mean nothing.
Not until you accept some

comfort with the darkness,
with those cold, guttural pangs

settling in your chest,
will you spy one nondescript

morning a slant of light
pooling near his desk

in the corner room, dust motes
swimming in a gilded stream,

the whispered fact 
that not all of him is gone. 

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Terence McCaffrey’s poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review, Freshwater, Red Eft Review, Right Hand Pointing, and elsewhere. He received a M.A.L.S. degree in Humanities from Wesleyan University and a B.A. from the University of Hartford, where he was the recipient of the Phyllis B. Abrahms Award in Fiction. He lives with his family in West Simsbury, CT.