It’s not that we’re hoarders
exactly. But the dining table has disappeared
under piles of half-sorted snapshots.
Two large bins clutter a closet
we can no longer walk in,
two more on the stairs, old books stacked
in the foyer beside an abandoned handcart.
I can’t bring myself to discard
my mother’s journals, oil paintings,
the quilt she pieced from my kids’ outgrown
shirts. Nor your mother’s snowman collection,
her degrees and glass dishes—
your father’s tools, Big Daddy’s coveralls,
Memaw’s denim jacket, or my dad’s horseshoes
and table-tennis paddles, new sweatshirts
to insulate him before he succumbed
to the nursing home.

Among these heaps of relics, our parents fade
into corners. No longer can I conjure
the tune of Mom’s chuckle, your father’s jaunty
eyes as he ribs me for a new stash
of fudge. When I strain to round the remnants
into life, they flatten like an EKG—
epigraphs, footnotes, not the text itself,
not the heft of body, breath.

On the kitchen desk strewn with paper files,
envelopes addressed in cursive, today’s torrent
of images slides onto the Smart Frame,
my daughter in Virginia uploading
pictures to share our grandson’s week, tiny
moments of elation, wave of lip
and eyebrow. I swipe my finger across
the display, tap the red hearts
beneath each photo so she’ll know
I haven’t dissolved into a jumble of leavings—
I’m on the screen’s other
side. She’ll watch the hearts light up,
imagine my eyes crinkling
like cellophane at the baby’s open grin,
spit glistening on his chin.