by Eric Arthur Mecklenburg
Morning’s legal forms arrived cold like goblin sharks
while I was in the linen closet, failing decisions
on kids’ medications, on which to flush or give away.
Each bottle must be held. Each bottle must be studied.
A tub of hotel shampoos I’m sure someone will want
took two hours to put back in the same as it came out,
beside our bedding, the princess gear, the race car sheets,
found in every family house that year above
the potty chairs and atomizers and mold-filled rubber ducks.
One week it took to stuff my children's artwork
into leaf bags. I cried them shut with lemon twine.
I gave my wedding dishes to the cat people,
or will do so, in a year or two. I changed the curtains,
duvet, shams. I wiped the dust of us from bedside lamps
I keep in case I read. But I can’t read.
Twenty days it took to put two wedding photos in the bin,
that smiling dress, that kissing mess, bare feet on sand.
Jetsam piled in closets, drawers, hidden memory sticks.
Each piece must be held. Each piece must be studied,
markers like barnacles on the face of a failing whale
watched by fathom’s mouths, the shells endure
when all the rest is gone.
Eric Arthur Mecklenburg is originally from Minnesota but has lived in many places outside of America. At the moment, he is working for an oil company in Saudi Arabia, writing his first collection of poems, and planning to move to Skyros, Greece.