Dormant

Poetry | S.M. Keil

There’s a yellow Victorian

on the corner

slightly off Main

built two-turns-of-a-century ago

with a large parlor

ample for dancing and

guarded from on high by

a great ornate chandelier.

There’re squirrels in the walls

and there’s water in the cellar—

For the industrious and skilled

it “has potential”;

For the intuitive and imaginative

it’s merely magic.

The sweet spot isn’t where you’d 

think—

Not in the attic or basement, 

but in a derelict outbuilding,

long and narrow like a railway car,

the roof sunk and buckled

in an inverse dowager’s hump,

the glass on the door webbed

from some past insult:

A boy’s stray baseball or 

a hellion’s rogue rock.

Light filters through red clay 

dust on windows lining the walls,

casting a tired sepia tone

over the contents of the shed:

A wardrobe full of menswear—

pinstripes, seersucker, silk bowties;

An amber demijohn quarter-full of 

tarry fig schnapps;

A crudely carved dragon of drift wood

on a Queen Anne nightstand;

A tufted ottoman with goldenrod

fringe stitched round the edge;

The wish bone of a goose with 

Wedgwood-blue silk threads 

knotted betwixt its arms

in a frozen game of cat’s cradle— 

Byzantine, the weave 

intentional but snarled.

An egg-like pendant of onyx rests 

in a baize-lined cabinet drawer

on a fawn suede thong, 

the oval stone lifts on a hinge

to divulge a lock of hair

so black 

it rivals the blurry silhouettes 

hanging on moldering

gypsum plaster walls and 

seeping 

from fissures 

in the ceiling. 

(I only see them in my periphery,

the horripilation on my limbs

mimics their bristling.)

I take quick inventory of this 

crypt of antiques,

and sight a yellowed kid-leather 

Scrapbook? Recipe book? 

Ledger? Log?

Diary? Commonplace?  

Methodically scripted on lines

inside are names like

Delphine, Delores, Geneva; 

Leander, Herbert, Oliver.

I flip to a fragrant foxed page,

a sprig of shriveled juniper

tucked into a stream of perplexing 

instructions about safeguarding

windows and doors. 

I snort, recalling the broken pane,

and the busted bolt… 

and yet…

No feet nor fingers 

touched 

the dust

flocking 

floor and furnishings;

No cobwebs

disturbed

or taffy-pulled 

from fastenings 

by a passing;

No voids 

evident 

where odds 

and ends

languished; 

No chinks 

in the doddery 

tower of detritus

mundane 

and domestic.