In the attic

In the attic, sweat trickles down the back

of my legs. Near the one window in the room,

Ria’s bright dollhouse, my aunts’ from the 40s, glows—

rooms painted new colors by my mother—turquoise,

canary, rose. The broken baby doll carriage

Dad made from a wicker basket, red

gingham sunshade strung on wire.

It took two days to work myself up to this trip

up the stairs. It took a bottle of wine.

It took digging my hands in wet dirt.

It took days to untangle the workweek,
the job I do like my dad did. 

I don’t want to look in the cardboard

box, the box my mother found when it was time

to pack Dad’s files, the file in my name, every

school picture report card softball roster—

file of the first born, cheeks-of-tan, chubby, crooked-teeth

girl in the 1976 Osage Elementary bicentennial yearbook, ponytailed in

the St. Raphael Archangel class shot, half-day kindergarten,

1972, not chubby yet. Trophy-holding tween in a black-and-white

glossy, in the sundress Mom made (it was yellow). Handmade

cards to Dad, a postcard from my first trip to New York. 

The floor seems to shift, like the cheap carnie funhouse at the St. Bernie festival. This is not

what I was looking for. I wanted my old portfolio. I wanted to see what I made before

the kids came. In this box I’m in the back seat breathing my dad's smoke. 

I only take what’s misfiled. The envelope from the hospital where I was born,

with my sister’s birth date and weight instead of mine, no baby picture inside.

A no-vacancies letter from the Coca-Cola Company, dated 1928, my grandma’s

last job hunt? An envelope stuffed after my first layoff, six years ago, cubicle detritus.

Look at this—the photos of Ria and Jake at the ranch, at the beach. Jake’s first attempt
to write his name, Ria's first notes, every little
scrap. See what she wrote? When I close
my eyes
I hear tires
on the crumbling

cement of the driveway.