None of these objects mean anything,
is what I would like to think—not
my father’s chair, not my mother’s glasses
on the side table by her (matching) chair.
These are just things. They could be priced
tomorrow, sold as a lot or one by one,
haggled over as I stand here in this stale

living room

where no one ever really lived, but where
I stood many times before, and never again.