Walk softly down the stairs into my cellar.
Hush now; don’t mind if they creak a bit.
They are older then they look, after all,
And with age comes privilege-
Allow them their complaints.

Turn left, and step onto
Old faded rugs, beige and pink carpeting.
Look out! Watch where your foot lands.
This is a dangerous mine field
Filled with bits of metal-
Sharp surprises.

Glance at the shelf
Plastic and brown
That holds years of books
Paper crafts and paper scraps and pine cones
Collected with my mother years ago in October.

Top of the shelf, four horses
Stuffed, with stiff manes and beady eyes
Glare down at you; resentful of this intrusion
To their close-kept domain.
I’ve half-forgotten them,
But still cling to the memory of
The windy day in fifth grade
When, shouting
We threw them up
Falling into the air’s embrace
And, buffeted as they were by the harsh breeze,
We swore that they could fly.

Next to the shelf broods an old computer
Hunched over itself, muttering about the faster newer upstarts
That we use today.
There are paints scattered on that desk,
And on a nearby table,
Their labeled colors peeking out from behind cloth scraps
Paintbrushes too lie scattered,
Their brushes tinted blue red green
From careless childish washings
Hands shivering under icy tap water
Hurried hassled rinse-and-wipe
On soaked paper towels
Smeared with watery stains of paint.

Half-finished creations lie about dejectedly
On the nearby never-used ping-pong table
Dominated by the white sewing machine.
It is an old enemy, made familiar
By struggles over tangled thread and torn cloth.

The floor is a battlefield
Clay figures lie like corpses
Sorted into piles by some rule or characteristic
That even I don’t know.

Another shelf
Identical to the first but for it’s content,
Slouches by the opposite wall.
It is weighed down by gravity
And countless useless treasures
Collected over the years
Smooth stones, bolts and screws.

Our old kitchen table
Now covered in clay and paint stains
Crossly stands in the corner
A space has been cleared,
Just enough to work on
If you keep your elbows close and your fingers careful.

An old rocking chair and a dusty ancient lamp
Lamp casting feeble but just-enough light
Rocking chair worn, caught and trapped by cobwebs in it’s feet
A silent willing prisoner.

This is where I live
This is my cellar
This is my home.