Styrofoam Static

Styrofoam Static


Note: My wife and I split up.  We put our house on the market; it sold in two days.
The closing took three months, so the buyers and their two little girls moved in
before we finished moving our stuff out.  That's when I go down the cellar.


Packing and cleaning the sold basement: closing
Inevitable that it would to fall to me
My sons were studying for their finals
My daughter teaching…they’re all free
The wife had taken the powder
Two suitcases, gone, in a glare
So I get the dust, mold, and garbage
I shouldn’t ‘a been looking for fair.

So I box all the books and the papers
E.B. White, Hatchet, and Doctor Seuss
Canning jars, albums, and trinkets
Of twenty six years in a whoosh
Twenty-six bags of garbage,
Tied neatly in rows at the curb
Twenty-six cartons of cardboard
Broken boxes—all memories disturbed

Our first VCR long forgot, broken
Silver trays, bowls, never used
Always been life’s jokes, tokens
Now found, now paused, so confused.
Here’s her box of college course papers,
Spores sprouting discontent
Learned to counsel, to heal all others,
But Gasp! at where her own life's went.

Legos, Care Bears, and Tinkers
Mutant Turtles, Jurassic Park,
Remember picking up all those stinkers
Hey cool!  Here’s the head of that shark!
Buyers’ kids above ground, giggling
Remember when ours were so young?
But she’s not here for an answer
Asking the question leaves me hard stung.

Swiping away at the cobwebs
To confront the last puzzle piece
I’d tossed all the Styrofoam packing
The last corner of this damnable job
And that’s the rub with these pieces
Protectors once—now simply cobs
Abstract unique plastic snowflakes
The goods they had cradled now gone.

But disposal of these is as costly
As see-meant blocks—fill as much space
Break ‘em down!  Pack ‘em in!  Then compress ‘em,
And the bill’s then much lesser to face.
So snap crackle pop go the foam blocks
Smaller but still all unique
Tiny white beads, charged and floating
Sticking—memories—to me