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. 
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