There is something stirring in the hardwood,
the color of stained honey, suffocating
under Skittle-colored plastic bins bulging
with the weight of laundry, fishing lures, mildewed books.
I follow the small pathways into each room of my father’s
apartment, just big enough for a unicycle—tributaries
of wood lathe where yesterday he was eating oranges
and reading Popular Science before folding
himself into the mattress for the last time.
The tiny ridges of floorboards were once
smoother than good whiskey. The rippling
water in each knot is the story
of what it is to grow. Trees grow branches like mothers
grow babies and all end up here, on the floor
together. I look for the veins
in these mounds of ***** dishes
and towers of magazines, some sign
of movement. We are all being held, kept
from what’s been running beneath us.
I want to scale the piles of shut-in relics,
climb into old age and never again
think about the wet hourglass
of snow tracked in from both doors
that kept us from collapsing
in exhaustion with our inheritance.