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Storage
by Faith Shearin

That year we left the house
we couldn't afford and put
our belongings in storage.
We were free now to travel
or live in tiny spaces.
We kept our chairs

and tables in a cement cell,
our bookshelves, our daughter's
old toys, clothes we wouldn't wear
or discard. There were books
we liked but did not

need and mattresses and
pots and pans. Sometimes
we went to visit our things: sat
in our rocking chairs,
searched for a jacket, listened
to an old radio. It was like

visiting someone I loved
in a hospital: the way, removed
from the world, a person or object
becomes thin, diminished.
The furniture on which we lived

our young life had no job but
to wait for us. It remembered
our dinners, the light through
our windows, the way the baby
once played on the floor.

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