A Visit

She sat talking to the social worker,
explaining how she first began
collecting hubcaps, then how she
visited junk yards where old cars
without tires rusted away. She brought home
fenders and bumpers, steering wheels
and shattered lights. At first, she said,
everything had a place. A collection
needs organization—hubcaps in the kitchen,
bumpers under the bed, steering wheels in the closet.
But you know, she said, when I began to
separate the foreign and domestic I ran out of space.
That's how the bathtub held shattered lights.
The social worker explained with the patience
of someone who couldn't understand
this penchant to collect—the house needed cleaning.

Do you know, she said, there's a man
who spent thirty years collecting Donald Duck items—
and someone who collected 80,000 Coca Cola objects?
They built shelves, glass cases, museums.

The social worker moved the fenders off the couch,
kicked aside a door, and moved a box of stick shifts
before saying, three days. You have three days.

Christ, she said, only needed three days.


Poetic asides prompt