Estate Sale

By Emily Milay

It was but a week after she’d died

That the vultures came to feed

On the carrion of crystal and porcelain

She had left behind.

Eighty years of accumulation glutted

The gleaming belly of her mansion.

It is a wonder the dishes and doilies

And Degas prints didn’t accompany her

To the grave—a modern pharaoh.

When the public poured in, they

Gaped at the grandeur and haggled for

Embers of an extinguished life.

I found myself amid the throng,

One coin amongst hundreds that

Pooled in a well of wealth.

Like termites, we ravaged each nook

And cranny, toting off our plunder,

Prideful in our polite thievery.

It was lawful, you see, because

We paid a fee—but how brutish is it

To expunge an identity in

A single afternoon.

The mob teemed forth, carting off

Candlesticks, cookware, and cardigans

Like a colony of covetous ants.

I knew what rot lurked in each soul.

Like me, they were lusty for the leftovers

Of a life.

We could not then see

The symptoms of a disease

That made us apathetic

To empathy.

I soon wearied of this levity —

This treatment of death with gaiety —

And let the great house belch me out

Onto its manicured front lawn.

I imagined its ghostly tender

And couldn’t help but wonder who

She was.

I itched to respect identity and so

Obsessively sought the obituary

That would give me the most precious

Possession of all: a name, a face, a history.

I soon found her legacy

Stamped smartly on a page.

Can you imagine? One page to fit

The great swell and surfeit

Of all her days.

I met her children, grandchildren,

Great-grandchildren, as they gazed

Out from between the lines of

The eulogy.

I learned of her charity work,

Her Cape Cod cottage,

Her enviable church attendance.

All beamed brighter than her

Bone china and spoke louder

Than the gowns which gorged

The gut of her closet.

A single sepia photo showcased how

She hoped to be remembered —

A bright, expectant youth dizzy

With the prospect of a long life

She thought would never end.

And though end it did,

The impression she left

Was larger than her estate,

Lusher than her lawn,

And worth more than the riches

The rabble razed that Sunday —

A week after she’d gone.