The Noise of this House
by Sean Thomas Dougherty
Not the pipes that creak, or the garage door opening and closing on its bent rim from where your father drove into it that day. No, not the beams creaking when the winter wind blows in off the great lake, or the snow piles up to feet on the roof. No, it is the sound of our daughter playing her piccolo late, those high notes reaching out as if the birds can hear her arpeggios. Or our oldest stomping around with her heavy feet, muttering to herself in between her silent time drawing in her room. Or your father with that boot he wears on his broken foot, or your mother stumbling bent backed from her sciatica, or the wheels of your father’s walker, or even the fights when our daughters argue over some inane thing like the character from a cartoon, or the character of a character from a cartoon. And soon I know it will be quieter here, quieter than those winters when you were gone in the hospital, and the girls were small and in bed, before your parents too grew old and ill. And sometimes when you are most frustrated, and go off to smoke in the garage, or drive and smoke, and maybe drink, I cannot judge you. But think soon the silence you sneak will be something more than measure, more than rests between the notes that are gone. And the pipes will creak, and the roof will leak. And only we will be here, if we are lucky, to hear the breathing of the other sleeping. And the snoring of the dogs.
Sean Thomas Dougherty’s books include Death Prefers the Minor Keys and the Second O of Sorrow from BOA Editions which won the Housatonic Book Award, and was co-winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize. His collaboration with Jeremy Shraffenberger Dueling Shovels was published by the University of Northern Iowa’s First Thursday Press. He works as a Carer and Med Tech for folks with traumatic brain injuries along Lake Erie.