Vanishing

I wish I didn’t cry at creeping vines

forming on bungalows, at bus station

lost and found receipts and forgotten gloves.

At the 60s spirits smoking Pall Malls

in my living room on Sundays evenings

in February when the heat kicks on.

Old dogs and moth-bitten baby photos,

worn-in recliners and class reunions

and lightning bugs in clear jars with the tops

punched out, a useless extension of life.

 

At the fire breather and the firefighter

holding hands on the Zipper at the county fair.

At stamps collections and scrapbooks at the Goodwill

and the certainty of sunflowers, heads seeking

what scorches them, their devotion unwavering

even after the evening sky dims to navy.

 

These weren’t my riddle to solve but they weren’t clues either,

just Faberge eggs behind glass at a museum,

public presents originating from a Russian tsar

who also fell victim to a vivacious magician

performing sleight-of-hand tricks with white rabbits and quarters.

 

At the tsar and rabbits and quarters.

At how they disappeared.

 

Kaitlyn Owens

Kaitlyn Owens writes poetry about the inheritances we carry—family patterns unseen on medical forms yet shaping us deeply. Her work has appeared in Fjords Review and Novus Literary Arts Journal, and she has received an International Merit Award from The Atlanta Review. A product manager by day and a restorer of old things by night, she believes in naming truths, however complicated. Visit her at www.kaitlynowens.squarespace.com.