Poem: Those Things That Disappear

Those Things That Disappear
by Victor Rook

Birthday cards with dates in the corner,
school notebooks filled with scribbles.
Old clothes out of style, like that
brown Western shirt you wore
with matching corduroys.
Where did they go?

Birthday circa 1969. Billy Blast-Off was the coolest toy ever!

Decorations you can no longer buy,
painted glass and covered with
loose strands of faded tinsel.
Once in a box in the attic
that smelled like cookies and mildew.
Now just a memory.
Who took them away?

Those macramé owls you made,
and that elaborate string art where
you accidentally left nail holes
on the dining room table.
The same table where undried paint
from a paint-by-number of a deer
left a stain around its edges.
Where are they now?

45 rpm records you bought,
so excited to see the song titles
and stack them up on the spindle
to play over and over again.
You thought they'd make
nice wall decorations someday.
But they are gone.

My first tennis racket.

Shifting lives and shifting boxes,
carried from place to place.
All accounted for then, but
now you no longer own
those things from your past.
Were they really thrown out,
or have they evaporated?

Like those dolls you once had,
GI Joe or Barbie, whichever.
Was it a yard sale, or did they get
tossed into the trash because
the dogs chewed their arms off?

I'd like to find that pile,
or giant room, I'd imagine.
Where everything I ever had in my
life is there for me to hold once again.
Those things that disappeared
are hiding somewhere, somehow,
whole or in bits and pieces,
on this Earth.

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