i.
cut by covid,
byzantium falls,
and with it its literature,
legends and lore dissolved
the cannon’s shot
and the soldier’s blow
what’s left in those ruins?
ii.
the sojourner arrives,
weary and worn,
with boxes and boxes,
a golden stamp left at home.
this box promises freedom,
an escape from all the old
from the pain and the dust.
the boy from the desert
has found his home in the sky
and likes the view of the city beyond,
buildings curving into a visual “V”,
and arrow into a strip of trees.
he leaves his boxes, and one day,
doesn’t return.
what happens to those
left alone in the dark?
iii.
the pipes, eight months unused,
rattle to life again,
erupting in yellow-red rusted water.
“i’m back,” the boy shouts,
“at last i’m back!”
he breaks out his boxes
and finds neat spaces for things to hide.
the boy thinks he’s taming the waters,
and bringing life into the world.
but his brow furrows and darkens,
“where did I put my scarf?”
iv.
the gift had a story.
to outcast’s sister had a hobby,
a spinning chair, and a need for things
to occupy the hands
in the nights long and cold,
and restless feelings around.
she knit caps for babies,
crocheted herself a place for needles to lay,
fashioned the boy a toy, another toy,
and on his twenty-first birthday,
a scarf, thick wool
houndstooth one side, and stripes the other
the boy showed it wherever he went
and made himself a mask of it
steaming his glasses with warmth,
and in the end, consumed by the box.
left in the closet full of dust, the old,
and preferred forgotten.
v.
“there is no such thing as a junk drawer,”
the prompt reads.
the boy looks for the most distant and obscure place he can think
to write a poem about a mop
and this treasure he finds:
what stories might it tell now?