Safe-Keeping

by Amy Soricelli

We collect the dead in our closets here - the back rooms filled with boxes piled high;
sheets of paper whisper thin; hard breath on the back of your neck.
The cousins lingering eyes; black and white on the stairs of The Capital
ice cream cones dripping in the sun.
Long gone from this earth having disappeared many years ago -they curl up at the edges now/one on top of the other.
Great aunt lives in a jar/its outer box wrapped in soft tissue paper layered deep -
all that is left collected in barbaric ritual.
She was not scattered across the landscape of some determined mountain/sulky stream.
There is a suitcase with letters- notes; dried flowers bits and pieces -
if i gathered  them up they would flutter like dust- leaving no proof they were there.
I can keep the dead in a box under the bed-shadows black/
lingering long growing wings.
wild ghosts wrapped tight in string.