How Will I know I'm Here?
Most of my records of this are at home. The broken bicycles you wanted. Walking makes me anxious, every vacation: clean out another closet it’s
not. an. addiction. I promise you somewhere cartoons and an insect, unfortunately nothing about Caroline’s grandfather in a coma I’m telling you
only a permanently installed swimming pool pump keeps our heads above water so no rodents in the basement a dismembered piano when the cat crept
down there and walked across the keys the baby-sitter was sure it was ghost, maybe they break our telephones, cell phones, gas bills, saxophones,
collar bones, have the fax machine hostage still in the barn just in case everyone has closets I know but think this is a little extreme keeping
all the receipts in boxes my father says for fear of trash pickers, estranged friends, ex-girlfriends, excommunicated cousins emerge from the
shrubbery thinking no one home so we keep Venetian blinds underneath the suitcases broken bicycles and dried up ceiling caulk on top of Stevie
Nicks albums, covers carved with the names of former wives probably from garage sales with other people’s scratches all over, in the box with
the swimming pool pump and a letter from the Gulf War in elementary school composing a formal letter versus a friendly letter which did we
send to the soldiers? Said he’d had Thanksgiving at Burger King, while my Thanksgivings went with many uncles and mashed potatoes and Polish
dumplings made of shredded beef wrapped in cabbage leaves my grandmother said they’ll make you fart & an uncle supplied an example, refusing
her a dishwasher (or did she pretend not to want one?) so they did the job exhibiting the effects of cabbage leaves on the large intestine I
am only guessing I wasn’t allowed though my grandfather would take me with him to the transfer station turn in all the beer cans and in return
I’d get the change buy a package of bubble gum, honestly, I can prove everything, somewhere there’s a shoelace, a laurel wreath, bottles, corks,
knives, a clam shell, a conch shell, a moon snail shell, these bookshelves are chronological not alphabetical, and in the drawer with the thrift
store coats a piece of my grandmother’s china and a happy birthday balloon helium crushed out and also tinsel and a pack of playing cards pink &
stuck with Kool-Aid gave the banjo to Caroline when her grandfather died and The Wizard of Earthsea containing a note not in the least neurotic
from my Aunt Tasha interested in a sort of taxonomy especially when the ground is soaked how much clothing needs to be worn outdoors documented
on undeveloped expired roles of film now installed the kitchen window above the washing machine leaking when loaded too full. Should you need
anything more, I’ve got photographs: William, the Colluseum, and Mother’s Day, and if you don’t believe me, here are ticket stubs, the bus to
Pittsfield, Hanover, and New York, and also ticket stubs from the plane to Martinique, the train to Chicago, and also from movies, and often
when looking for a hammer find a moth-ball table cloth and cough syrup, and trying to find the staple gun unearthed Chaucer, the Karma Sutra,
and the 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous handbook the real thing was stolen either during World War II or by an excommunicated cousin so we only
have the charcoal study for the painting, this is all the evidence I’ve got to go on stepping over magazines taxes & a monogrammed hairbrush
we find what buttons come unsown from whose clothing.
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