The Cast Iron Star
My father’s hoarding heart
is bending bricks in his garage
creasing the foundation, turning
his house downward,
closer to the pit
he clawed out from.
At first, just artifacts
bits of his past lives
recovered from dead family.
Immortalized in tins, boxes,
bins, stacks, and piles in his office,
study, backroom, and garages.
My mother would whisper
that he’d always be this way
perpetually holding, gathering, keeping
things for the future, or to anchor the past
a ship adrift in trauma and loss,
without a compass or map.
I stare at that cast-iron bathtub,
the 600 pound invertebrate
bulging out of this house’s spine.
Another shadow added to his grief silhouette
a mixed-media of material requiems
to his past and present.
I know that when he dies
it’ll still be here.
I don’t have the strength to move it.
How could I pluck his favorite constellation
of its most beloved star?
For him,
it’ll always lead home.
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