When you’d died
and they’d taken you away
and burnt you next day
all we were left with
was your whole life
packed in between the walls
nothing thrown away
nothing recycled
everything jumbled
interconnected
inextricable
a path through it
doors that opened or shut
boxes drawers cupboards
dressers trunks folders
presses shelves
garages attics
I’d think I knew you
revolvers
cast-iron pans
bank statements
photos in cigar boxes
notebook lists of anecdotes
from the presidents’ lives
then find another thing
jar full of beard trimmings
secret mailorder magazines
bag of your own teeth
ticked list with the dates
of every half- or quarter-cigarette
you’d smoked recently
which were smoked with Larry
boxes of paperbags
medals bills
diagnoses
draft wills
that letter that ashtray
that hint of a romance
or was it nothing at all
in the end
all that was possible
was to just invent you
and say I’d known
that man
Image: Clutter by Jonas Ahrentorp, published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license.
Be a peaceful ghost, John.
Bag of Anything 
Wow. An interesting take on a hoarder’s afterlife. I feel the same way every time I am looking for something in my mom’s craft room – she was an organized hoarder, but still a hoarder. 😉
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outstanding!
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Aw, shucks.
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A powerful poem. I liked the ending, especially. In an odd way, it’s the opposite of mine, where I said that we were imagined by him. and we remain.
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Very powerful. All of the details make up such an interesting and emotional list of things that are full of meaning and loss.
https://goo.gl/HBGafj
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You don’t have to have been a hoarder. My mother’s home was always meticulously neat and ready for company, but in her attic, her barn, her garage, her back bedroom closets, we found thousands of vestiges of a life we had only guess at. Each human being is a mysterious unexplored universe of which we can know only a tiny part.
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