poem05 Sep 2022 05:53 am
Ursula Whitcher
Sue's grandkid asks, "Will it be hard for you, learning a different language?" and Sue says, "Honey, Fargo is America," but you say, "Oh, I've done it before." The new boxes were Sue's—black Amazon arrows, that navy apron like an eared robot—and the books go in, The Bread Bible, the Greek Bible, the free Koran from the booth at the fair. You have liquor boxes from the last move, the housing crash; you kept the Bacardi ones, because you felt some kinship with the bat. Linens in those, mostly, and clothes that mostly fit. "It's been ten years," Sue says. "You don't seem to have aged a day." You smile and pat your hair. You've bleached the roots, of course. Dot-com boxes next, Pets.com, FreeTShirts4Ever. You wrap the Far Side coffee mug in tissue, and the teacup with roses you say was your grandmother's. Liquor boxes again, and you're packing the vases you never managed to break. The tape crinkles and tears. You miss the old, heavy Scotch-brand stuff. You miss the twine, the crates, the boxes for each hat, your steamer trunk with its heavy latch. "Do they speak English in Alaska?" another child asked, once. Before that, "Is it hard to learn American?" You miss the straw you stuffed around the teapot, the Book of Common Prayer, all that time you spent at graveyards, leaving roses, with their stems wrapped in green ribbon, back when you still thought you'd end there, packed under stone and grass.
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[…] poem, “Packing Up,” Polu Texni, September 2022, http://www.polutexni.com/?p=10881 […]