written by: Karen Janowsky
The warped plywood sign fades, draws attention
away from itself in faded red, the dot and the line
of the ‘i’ attached by a dribble of paint. The white
clapboard shack is damp from a drenching
rain followed by humidity so thick the mosquitoes
hide, and paint peels and slides from the siding
like a redneck Salvador Dali, complete
with melting cuckoo clocks, shotguns repurposed
into lamps with dry rotted, pleated shades, and a brittle,
plastic bonsai whose leaves have long since cracked.
The gravelly, pockmarked path to the sagging stairs
of a dilapidated porch with a few holes down the center
are little deterrent when sunlight reflects so brightly
from the broken and smeared front windows in
their splintery frames. I imagine empty
inkwells, dull, rusty tools, moldy and faded Life
magazines. It’s the middle of the day in the middle
of nowhere, and my legs itch from the tall, sticky
grass off the path we’ve been walking. A baby
doll with one eye colored over in magic
marker, a stack of avocado green dishes, dented
coffee pots, and a dozen empty, dust-coated
mason jars on a rickety shelf. Those might be
mouse droppings on the wedding dress I see
hanging from a coat hook. A carcass,
gray and matted, the jawbone jutting and exposed,
rests on the windowsill. How do we decide
What’s worth keeping? Does the rediscovery of another
life’s detritus have value? A woman once told me
in her mid-fifties, she found God when she found
her mother’s ring, which she thought she’d lost,
tangled in the hole of an old winter coat, caught
like an expensive spider dangling from a thread
between the wool and the lining. It was an invitation,
she’d said, a celestial hand extended in exchange
for belief and devotion. The step is rotten—
I twist my ankle as I ascend and the porch buckles
beneath my weight. It’s dark in there. My hands
are filthy black from where I wiped the glass
for a better look at what shoppers neglected
to acquire, the warped and broken remains
of things picked through. I wrap my fingers
around a support and lower myself to the ground;
you take my hand to steady me. I wipe the dirty
hand on my dress and show you the other. Here:
here is my heart, yours for a steal and a song.
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