MOTHER'S HOARD

 (c) 8/7/2021

In Mother’s mind it all has equal value:

the loose, stripped screw, plastic Happy Meal toys,

a pharmaceutical bottle filled with teeth.

But from which of five mouths? All of it

mixed into bins and boxes alongside recipes

she’d never alternated with the TV or instant dinners,

unopened greeting cards and cut out articles

unrelated to any of us.

Like busted shells mixed with the sand and stones

on an ever-spreading shore none of us had visited,

how could anyone find memory in these scraps?

 

Then here, a decades grown stack of Gift Cards.

Like other sensual experiences she chose to miss or waste,

these are now wallet-sized milestones of the economy,

all these restaurants closed in the last recession, or the one before it.

The medicine cabinet filled with cologne that has soured,

and makeup, glumpy or dried

that we girls purchased back in junior high.

She wanted but was startled by touch.

In a sock drawer I find the golden apple paperweight

I bought her from my first job’s wages.

It is still in its red velveteen bag

although the different tables have always had stacked paper.

Nothing I ever offered was accepted or used.

 

Now she is being moved against her will

from four stories to one room.

She has prepared to dig in,

to fight with the neighbors over noise

and parking, and property lines:

those goddamn bastards

to forget why she drove to the store,

to forget trash day, or to check Sell by Dates,

to turn off the stove top.

For years she has forgotten to clean the litter

and the floorboards need to be replaced.

Mother imagines every trinket, every scrap

will go with her, even the disintegrating shoes

she wore at her wedding seventy years ago.

She refuses to believe we would be callous enough

to send hoard, unwanted, to a landfill.