Storage Unit

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.