The Kids Don’t Want Our Stuff
Throw away your antique chair, crushed
velvet cradling grandma’s slight
skeleton like a pearl—You
balanced carefully
on her ancient unbending
knees. Give away
the bric-a-brac, porcelain
shepherds lined up like stone soldiers
in a king’s damp tomb. Sell
your dead mother’s cocktail ring, too
large for any finger to bear. You’ll never
find a place for it, but try
anyhow. Catch the woman
from the antique store, gauging
your lot of heirloom
plates, calculating profit as she offers
you a deal. Take
the money, wrap up the blue
bone china cup from England—your favorite–
tiny violets hand-painted
around the rim a century before
you were born. Watching your fingers
shadowed through the other side,
ashes of bones–A substance so fine, you can
see all your past.
