Interior with collection of tie tacks

by Jeanne Obbard

i.

In a small house, the tide of objects
is driven by you. You are the moon,
arbitrary and overriding. You are
the goddess of the hearth, assembling, 
and the one who cuts the thread.

ii.

An object takes time.
It takes time to have acquired it,
time to accustom yourself to it,
to pick it up from here
and put it down there,
over and under, looking for the spot,
touching it, feeling carefully
for the space, the relevance.

iii.

The things with no home keep washing up–
my father’s tie tacks on the dining room table:
Boeing at 5, 10, 15 years–
the whole of my childhood;
then there is one that is a tiny rocket;
one that looks like the Starfleet symbol;
and the silver frog I gave him
near the end.

A whole house full of boxes
to unpack. Instead I sort the tie tacks
over and over.

iv.

I am the moon, I rule
this place. But I am just the lid
on a crumbling box, 
preserving some atoms against
the wide expanse of nonexistence.
The stars say any object is every object;
we made you,
we’ll take you back someday
and this is how to let the tides out, but still 
I long to hold on, I mean
to what little is left. I tell the stations
of his years, I pray, perhaps uselessly
to a God who’s sentimental,

in whom all things are found, all things
returned.

::

Jeanne Obbard holds a BA in feminist and gender studies from Bryn Mawr College, and works in clinical trial management in the greater Philadelphia area. Her poetry and essays can be found in Cleaver, Drunk Monkeys, The Moth, and Poetry Daily. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart Awards and is a former Leeway Seedling Award winner.

Image: Kadarius Seegars

ID: a pile of brown cardboard boxes.