My mother has emptied the smallest
drawer in her kitchen, part of moving
from this ungainly house she and my
father have lived in forty five years.
This drawer is smaller than my smallest
drawer. When she opened it to show me
what she had accomplished my medulla
oblongata rang and rang and it was all
I could do not to rip the drawer off its
track and jump on it. They have a
3600 square feoot house. this drawer
less than one square foot. I see my
not-so-future self poised over drawers
in this kitchen Goodwill box at my knee
pondering each crumbling raisin cookie's
place in the pandora's box of my childhood.

As my fiction teacher used to say, we got
us some rough sledding. How do we take
oral troth and turn it into action? I want
to stab the empty drawer with a fork and
run screaming. I ran. At twenty-one, I
saw I wasn't going anywhere, sludgy head
sludgy heart sludgy body no sleds no snow
no future but what I saw sleeping in my
parents' bed, accumulating in their closets.

I watch my father stick two rubber bands
in the emptied drawer. They have no
intention, they never did, they never will.
I am damned sad for the waste they
have laid thick in boxes and on shelves.

Away from the house my mother laments
again, is uncomfortable, wolfs her lunch at
the bright painted brand new mall styled
Jewish deli. I fidget. Fold my napkin into
an envelope. Maybe I can fit inside it. As
my daughter manages the conversation.

My mother asks us back inside
where my father watches baseball
in the room next to the drawer.
It is snowing in my brain like a TV
on the fritz. Nobody winds
my grandmother's metronome,
but it ticks with my grandfather's
stopped clocks downstairs.