The Tenuous Thread of Sanity

All of the sounds that live in a

basement resound vividly in an 

                                              old house.

Years of heartbeats and

footsteps of mice and centipedes, of the cats 

in the dark. The furnace 

breathes the fumes of heat,

churns in the dank moist underbelly where the tools hide and the extras, the things no one has room for but no one wants to lose and every one forgets about:

toy airplanes and bottle caps, the little toy fighting 

men and candles, the boxes of books and dolls 

of hair blown hourglass women, the clothing that used to fit and might again after 15 lbs. magically 

disappear 

               thanks to some wise guy who decided that eating only meat was the next crazed trend everyone would be stuck on; the bar bells that were going to make you a muscle bound mighty man, rusty ice skates you keep because they remind you of spending that one day with your 

father 

out on the frozen lake so long ago but you remember it like it was on DVD, with his big leather mittens and white cotton falling out, and the morning's unshaven look

just you two and windy iced lake.  it's not so cold. no not too cold, and the pictures and the broken picture frame;

And the box with 

no label or marking

that's been sitting there for 

longer than you can remember but it won’t go anywhere – it’s meant for storage

in the basement of an old house.

That’s what basements are good for and attics too.