My mother blamed ghosts when we moved back
in with her parents, afraid of the more tangible
suspended syllable before a debt collector’s
voicemail, morning malt-breath, chest tightness, broken
thrown things.
Ten years
in mildewed storage units, makeshift structure
city, dust haze, ghost town for luckless yellow
jackets, cardboard box bricks with packing tape
mortar and trashbag hills, our walkways little rivers,
the basketball hoop a busted streetlamp against the back
wall, hauled out from the front yard a few days before
the foreclosure. My stepdad used to fold himself over,
red and spitting worthlesses. Now he helps me scavenge
these boxes for baby pictures and the blue-trim china
kept in shrink-wrap. The arms of a plastic fir proffer
dead lights, wrapped in wire and lace binding
from a quilt I don’t remember. There are no gods
here, only spiders.
Caleb Howard is a non-binary writer, an English major at the University of West Georgia, and Editor-in-Chief of the Eclectic literary journal. Caleb enjoys reading obscure texts and petting animals.
Twitter: @calebjayhoward.