LUKE KOESTERS

10,000 Years of Happiness

While you fold & stow Mom’s
dresses, june bugs wrestle awake,
late for spring cleaning.

You’re scared to move on
to the kitchen downstairs, to the
cabinet Mom hid cigarettes

& polaroids of you in. The thought
of unclicking her drawer’s deadbolt twist
twirls your stomach more than

the mealworms & silverfish
scuttling the grout criss-
crossing porcelain tiles,

the sprouting potatoes,
mashed mushrooms mucking up
yellowed laminate countertops,

or her once white fridge decorated
with alphabet magnets holding your photo
together from a dim Chinese buffet

housed in a frame that lied to you,
proclaimed you two the owners
of 10,000 years of happiness.

You’ve picked through Mom’s albums over & over. But now,
from shaky red acrylics that mimic her own hangs
handfuls of Fabuloso in sponge buckets

in charge of clean-scrubbing corners
where Mom used to sing made up
lullabies. You knuckle under,

peeling open your eyes.
A moment of silence
for the old ways.