Box by Box

I feel the key turn in the door. My door. He pushed his way inside.
I cannot help but allow him in.

I think he came to pick up some of the shelving that's stacked in my
front room. But, no. He's been distracted.

He mounts my stairs, hesitantly at first, but quickening his pace, as
if knowing what he'll find at the top.

Boxes. That's what he's found. Boxes of books and boxes of her art
supplies. Her. Why can't he spend more time with me? But they found
another house to call home. That's why the constant trips to cut the
grass but not to stay for dinner, that's why the mail & box pickups
but nothing more meaningful.

The boxes.

What now has he found to draw his eye? Ah, I should have guessed...
books.

Not just any box, of course. Many of these bare the family name,
penned in faded ink, in his deceased mothers hand:

Black Boy; Snow Falling on Cedars; Excellent Women; Three Men in a
Boat; Purgatorio; O Pioneers!; The Autobiography of Malcolm X; A Death
in the Family; and Seven Gothic Tales.

What a mixture of titles, of genres. Now I see where he gets it.

Please. Take the boxes and go. I continue to want a human to live
with me, to live in me, but I know you are lost to me.

Go.

..HF.

Sent from my iPhone