The Literary Mirror

This is the only room with no door to slam,
which is exactly why we chose it, generation after generation,
for the arguments that mattered too much
to risk someone walking away mid-sentence.

My grandmother had this argument here.
My mother had a version of it, updated,
same stairs, same fourteen steps,
same insistence on being heard to the landing.

I am having my own version now,
with someone who will, in turn,
stand exactly here in thirty years,
certain, as I was, that this argument is new.