The Attic
when you find yourself
back here kneeling
on the barnacle board, attic floor
looking for the glass-spun ornaments
wrapped delicately in yellow-tinged paper,
and those precious decorations
made by the small hands of your small children
who are now grown and distant
when you spot that dust-laden time capsule
buried behind boxes of old baby clothes
and tax filings.
You drag the capsule into the middle of the attic
where you sit and straddle your past like a gift,
thumbing through pictures of your pre-baby body
smoking a cigarette in a white bikini
leaning back on a wooden railing
somewhere in hot Texas.
You stare into those squinty eyes
of that happy and hopeful girl,
who is unaware of the kneeling to come.
Carolynn Kingyens' poems have appeared in Muse, Straitjackets, The Furnace Review, The Blue Jew Yorker, Silenced Press, Angelic Dynamo. She recently completed a 52 page poetry collection entitled Square Root of Desire.
