Help Yourself
Baggage
Help Yourself
Before my father died, he stuffed his pockets with fire trucks
from all of the area precincts. I knew of his theft, but the sparks
of red were the only color he had left and so the engines
went wailing to his grave. When the smoke detectors cried
over my mourning toast, the volunteer brigade answered on foot
and without a ladder. It was the luck of a garden apartment
that they shooed me from the flames like a foiled potato.
Unable to aim the spray, the firemen joined me beside the hydrant
and we watched the blaze slither upward making everything strange.
One suggested they could do more with the proper equipment,
and I explained that everyone who leaves me takes more
than what belongs. He nodded and ran to my open window.
Baggage
There are no more fathers.
Everyone gets a briefcase
instead, brown leather
with brass locks and three initials
etched into the spot
below the handle. Children spend
their train rides guessing
what the first two stand for.
If a father would have coached
a little league team, the son
finds a lineup inside.
Some discover trail maps
and merit badges, car keys
and advice columns, a little
cash for ice cream at the beach.
The girls with no mothers,
either, are faced with tampons
and training bras. Teenage boys
are grateful for condoms
without the awkward talk.
When middle-agers turn the dials
to their secret combinations
and pop the latch, up turns
a letter laced with guilt
or a nursing home bill. So many
adults started flinging
their briefcases into the lake,
Congress had to pass a statute
nicknamed the Oedipus law.
It surprised me then, how many
of my friends were jealous
of the ones that had always
been empty, or sadder still,
the ones that bulged with secrets
unknown behind impervious locks.
Amy David moonlights as a poet in Chicago, IL. Her work has appeared in a variety of journals including Foundling Review, Writers’ Bloc, and apparatus magazine.
