I rifle through the photos you keep in the antique icebox in what used to be our dining room. You are at work and Paul is sleeping in the recliner in the living room, twenty feet away. It's a creaky old house. The kind that settles and breathes, jaded and tired. "I'm done being a house" it says. "I'm done giving every thing to you" Let bygones be bygones. When I was eight, I was vaccuming spider webs out of the windowsil in my bedroom. The window broke and we stuffed the broken hole with newspapers that turned yellow in the sun. Different spiders moved in and it was like nothing had happened at all. Wasps built a paper house right outside. I promised to stop lying if you would just believe me. As quiet as I could I picked photos with me in them of times I remembered of family I would miss You called me when I was twenty-seven to ask if I could come down to California to help you watch your mom die, and I had to keep myself from telling you that you've been dead to me for years. Still, I found myself apologizing to you for leaving how I did. Sometimes I will leave a party the same way: steal a ring from the dish in the bathroom try on someones lipstick and then I leave without telling anyone. But I didnt mean it, the apology. When your mom finally died, she died in an old folks home. I saw a photo of her, hollow, wearing a bib and being spoon fed by a nurse. The pears dont fall far from the tree. The pears rot in the sun and wasps eat the meat, sick hot syrup. I left our house with just enough wisdom to bring my photographs with me and to leave you both behind. I picked one where you are smiling and holding me, Dad next to you grinning awkwardly like an idiot.