Cleaning Out the Basement
Sarah Koenig Here we guard against old injuries and prepare for new ones. I sort the boxes and toss old Mary Janes, a hand brace, the wrap that stabilized my foot after a fall down the stairs. Here’s where placemats go to die – the ones we don’t even use on Christmas. Piles of baby clothes asleep. I fold their tiny shoulders. They make me wonder why some butterflies unfurl the wings hidden in their skeletons and others descend into labeled archive. |
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About the Author: Sarah Koenig lives in Seattle, WA. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Calyx, Mudlark, DIAGRAM, Barrow Street and Forklift, Ohio, among other journals. Her work has also appeared in Washington 129, an anthology of Washington state poets and on King County transit as part of the Poetry on Buses project. She still has not finished cleaning out the basement.