There, There

There is a skinny staircase that leads to the cellar in the house you grew up in.
There, an abandoned hoarder’s home.
In chock-full cardboard boxes lives your dead grandmother’s scarab necklace,
                                                     your sister’s tired stuffed-horses,
                                                     your father’s worn-out baseball hats,
                                                     your mother’s unpolished champagne glasses,
and your collection of rotten porcelain dolls.

They’re fragile figures, 
in torn-up gowns and shriveled bonnets, smiling the Mona Lisa. 
And you watch as the wave of nostalgia crashes and swallows you whole.

Now you're drowning.

The sound of a doorbell,
the creaking of stairs,
a laugh. 
Delicate, shiny, smooth emerald green,
the crack of a bat. 
shattered champagne glasses.
Old radio music, new leather seats.
Empty streets
and gray lights.

There, there
They’re there.
In memory, in pictures, in stories.

They’re there.