Poetry

The Universe In Storage

My family in unit 67

Photo by Darrin Moore on Unsplash.

I roll up the storage unit door and find the universe: the first half of my father, incubated, dried like an apricot, all his first seventy years,

a train set no longer works, tools and board games, a table with three legs belonged to my grandmother, her 1000-word jigsaw puzzle right where we left it,

dad is made of more yesterdays than tomorrows, and there are seven jars sticky with apple jam from the orchard out back of the old house,

I put three jars of roofing nails on grandma’s desk so I can find the billiard sticks, then move three boxes of books so I can reach the bookshelf where grandpa stored his Reader’s Digests, Ian Fleming, and Louis L’amour,

everywhere is littered with evidence of things done once which will never be done again, the old dirt bike, greasy grimy dirty dead, nobody is coming back to make it run again, my grandfather’s sea-chest with the broken hinges, everyplace around me is a reminder of my legacy, rusted iron, worn leather, splintered spirit,

my nostrils fill with decay and the stuck smell of winter while I file through boxes of manila envelopes, old letters, and apologies,

I knock my knee against a cast-iron ashtray and cut my leg on the shark-teeth…