Storage Unit
You don’t have room for it, or present need.
Twelve place-settings of china, inherited.
A hulking, dusty treadmill, adjustable speed
and incline. A set of golf clubs, their heads
pushing out of the bag like hungry cats.
Your toys. Barbies naked together, piled
on plastic shoes and metallic gowns, flaps
of cardboard folded in on top. Files
crammed in a metal cabinet, not sorted.
Your apartment is small, only one closet,
and no basement. So you pay for public storage,
park the boxed oddities that don’t fit
at home. You visit once or twice a year,
dread the shhhhh of cardboard being slid
on concrete, the horror of spiders nesting here,
the uneasiness rooted in lifting up lids.
Oh yes, people and their stuff. The poem is wonderful. And I've seen bins with naked barbies.
ReplyDeleteI'm after my husband to get our utility room cleaned out. You must have taken a peek in there.
ReplyDeleteWonderful poem.
Oooh, thank God I don't have that problem! : )
ReplyDeletenice. love the feel in this...i still have a coupe boxes in my parents basement from growing up...love to visit...and they keep the spiders away...smiles.
ReplyDeletefrom Therese L. Broderick -- Nice rhyming (near rhymes, etc.) in this poem, quatrains like square boxes. The poem's imagery reminds me of cemeteries and caskets, of visiting gravesites twice a year. Good spooky poem for Halloween!
ReplyDeleteIt's our garage. I agree with Therese - there's a macabre flavor to this.
ReplyDeleteI got shivers and an itch to haul stuff away.
You wrote that for me. Didn't you?;-)
ReplyDeleteBeautiful as always Hannah! Oh, those naked Barbies... it reminds me of my childhood packed up and left under the good care of my lovely grandma.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how things that once were so important to us sooner or later just become things inside a cardboard box.
And the fear of spiders... I think I always fear the spiders crawling on my hands more than those nesting in my memories.
♥
Isa
hehehehe love this.
ReplyDeletewe all have one of these, don't we?
thea.
xx
Hi Hannah,
ReplyDeleteWe have a storage unit. It's insane, too much stuff, and more, in our third bedroom. I do hate the slide of cardboard on concrete.