at odd’s end

The basement keeps track of what the house forgets.

Like
wilted folders of receipts. 
Bent nails in coffee tins.
A socket missing its wrench mate.
And the winter boots that never learned to leave.

No matter the season 
light arrives late here—

a starved single bulb, humming like it’s 
preoccupied with a far off thought,

languishes in a far corner,
thinking about quitting. 

A pull-chain thinned with years of now abandoned purpose reminisces fondly on the dozens of people that paused

right here,

maybe in reverence
maybe in something else. 

pausing for a moment just
before calling upstairs
“just a second!”

Smell comes next.

Cold cement.
Cardboard sweetened by the damp.

A ghostly must of paint thinner, mouse bedding, and Christmas wrapping paper breathing out its dye and sparkle- 

seems to kick up with each step. 

Under the stairs, the ceiling lowers its voice.
Dust suspends like a held breath.
Spider silk stitches corners together
as if to keep the dark from falling apart.

Funny,
we keep our heads down to avoid the worry and pain that can come from a misplaced wood screw 
so much so 

that even as we leave we remain in duck and cover, 

hunched over 
protecting our heads 
like the sky could fall on us 
at any moment. 

At the cold room door, light is refused entry.
It’s held, collected, and outlines the frame instead—

a thin, bright rule drawn on the floor,

as if warning something to stay put.

I’ve been told that there is a window inside that cell, but I have never been brave enough to check. 

The door holds fast, metal-lipped and sweating,
a cage for old fears,
for whatever the house learned
not to let wander upstairs.

a memory of my dad going to the cold room and me wondering if
he would ever come back 

sends a shiver along my neck. 

The crawl space knows more about this place than any other. 
It Knows the morse code of ticking heat pipes.
It Knows earth—real earth—
cool and mineral, and what it feels like under its feet. 

It knows to remind the house, 
that it used to be wild and undomesticated. 
sometimes tantrums with floods
sometimes it lurches. 

Humbly it sometimes
declares that 
it was once a hole.
Maybe a burrow
a den
or a hutch. 

There  are things with no proper category:
a single roller skate,
manuals for machines that outlived their companies,
a chair missing confidence in one leg.

“How ya doing down there?” She says. 
“Just a minute.” I say to myself. 

Funny how light skims instead of landing.
How does it do that?
Staying in motion 
tumbling from the kitchen 
upstairs 
existing yet ignoring physics 
altogether
It slides across concrete,
catches on rust,
then fails politely at the far wall.

Down here
Everything waits at odd’s end—
not lost,
not useful,
just paused—
holding the itch of what it used to touch,

holding the dim idea
that someone might come back
and need it
one last time.