"My Grandmother's Closet"

“My Grandmother’s Closet”

My grandmother’s closet held things I didn’t understand.

Things that were too big.

Shoes and purse straps and dresses

too threadbare to make public. There was wrapping paper angled

in the corners and rain nets balled in the pockets of coats…

Old makeup kits and curler sets

crowded its floor like broken headstones. 

Buried souvenirs from day trips and week-long vacations

deep in its crevices.  She also kept her overflow of sewing materials

in baskets and bags

careless and cascading among overstuffed

boxes and empty suitcases. 

Boxes of things unopened and new and forgotten or decayed. 

Something surely drew her attention away. 

She used her closet to keep secret birthday and Christmas gifts.

It was a place we rarely ventured. 

I imagine she kept these items because

she no longer

thought about them.

Collected

and amassed.

I wonder how often she thought of the things there

never moving and bearing the weight of new things.

Bearing the burden of time.

Layers of things compressed into sediment.

I suppose those things stood as a kind of archive

for her life

fossilized and hardened.