Originally published in Book of Matches
They would start in the den
Small. Organized.
Dad had said to take anything they might use so
they built two boxes. Keep. Donate.
The classics were no surprise
In the classroom she had shone brightest and laughed. Most.
Faulkner, Dante, the Russian and others she loved quickly filled Donate
Her older boy said he’d leave, buy more
The other said he’d stay
to stack her staunch companions.
Atop a tidy desk, fat Malory wobbled atop crooked Graves,
Between Chaucer and Milton, Moliere protruded, thin, haphazard
and the younger wondered if she had ever enjoyed today.
The older returned, said “Who knows?” and by lunch those who understood were entombed and taped shut.
They ate burgers in her kitchen, where she had toiled to reinvent their gripes,
and could not find the words to quiet her memory, silent and sorry for something they could not name.
Glad not to have used her dishes, they wadded waxed paper and soiled napkins.
Into Donate 2 they dumped unopened cookbooks
collections of poems that had no stories.
“I don’t get it.” the older said, and the other nodded because he was the younger.
History books (she said you must know what they lived through) next,
too bulky, unwieldy
so that maybe some buff will pick through to read a spine that makes him smile.
Parenting guides, how-to-grieve, promises of life extensions
chucked into the hollow
until they reached the lowest shelves
of dusty guides to lands others painted:
the Lakes,
the place he first spotted Beatrice,
the city where so much happened it changed names three times.
Her dingy hopes, all of them, tumbled into cardboard, somersaulting upon themselves, collapsing onto one another in the speed of the living
while wisps of discard floated up
to beg them stop or slow.
“We may just beat the traffic,” the older said, and the other nodded because he was the younger
and could not find the words.