Archaeology

The ones who come next will never know
how we rinsed our mulberries in the kitchen sink,

tilting the colander under cold water, shifting
globes of fruit from side to side. How we pressed

our ears to the baseboard, voices echoing in vents
between our rooms, how we sang to the blind moles

scratching in the dark. We leave no glyph,
no trace. Evidence exhumed—shoeboxes

holding dead parakeets, unfinished blueprints,
rusted lengths of bicycle chain—they will never 

understand what the pieces mean, who this family was,
never fathom the quiet of our last night in the house—

city owls, bare branches tapping glass, the frozen
spell of icicles hung from gutters, breaking, breathing.

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Thanks to Copper Nickel, where this poem first appeared.