II.
Every four years or so I carefully---so as not to get dog fur and nasty crumbles on me---haul the rugs outside and lay them over a lawn chair or the broken railings that belong to the broken stoop or the bushes on either side of the railings. I find one of the dead branches that I keep in the bushes just for this purpose: to beat the rugs like a brute until they are dirty with bits of rotting wood and bark, because the dead branches have been rotting in the bushes since I put them there. They get so dirty that I resolve the matter as if it were a problem. I resolve to shake them by hand. And as I flap them in front of me I lean back and edge away so the accumulations don't enter my nose and mouth and eyes. But when all is through, I still sneeze and wheeze and rub my eyes and press on them and scratch my tummy and pick the strange sweat out of my bellybutton and sniff and look up to see if any neighbors saw that last part. When I need to make space, I have Spring Cleaning.
I sit in my room and look. I sit and look til my butt goes to sleep. Then I stand. I stand and stare with my knees bending inwards underneath me, so that when I look down I can see my tummy and my thighs and my feet but I can't see my knees.
I stand and stare everywhere til I can't feel my feet and I have to find my inhaler. It's spring cleaning and the spider in my chest knows it so she climbs up to my throat and spins a slimy net to catch naïve and reckless allergens. She has to hang fast because the web in my throat quivers up and down and shakes off little droplets as I hack and gulp the air. Her net dissolves under a gravelly shower of non-stick cooking spray flavor, sends the spider away like acid rain that's dull and wide in my throat. Then I return to my room and eyeball it. I pull a fishing rod from the nearby wreckage and I bless the sailors who died there and I brandish it at the tempest that sent them. I wedge it between an aluminum locker and a black cat, and l lever the locker up so that I can kick it onto its side and step into the one by two space I just freed up. I have to abandon the fishing rod before I make the step---I can't hold it with my teeth and I'll need both hands for balance. It's a tough decision, tough as Teflon but lucky me there's a fireplace poker within reach of my new position. I hear a cry of glee as I retrieve it. I go to work, poking at all the plastic pegs and fastfood napkins and wheeled office chairs and office chair wheels. If you push them hard enough they'll leave.
I push the really old gluegun and the gluegun sticks that don't really fit and the typewriter ribbon and the travel-sized toiletries and brown paper grocery bags that must be pushed and not lifted because one handle is ripped and they're full of the heaviest things. I put the poker down and talk to the allergens. The continent of dust motes and dust mites and dog fur and crumbles and clay specks and catkins. They leave because they are too feathery to stand their ground as I talk to them. Then I consolidate the glow-in-the-dark stars that fell off the ceiling, that won't leave the room til they've all been reunited. I've heard that when you fall hard with others the bond is unbreakable. I consolidate them and they leave altogether.
With all the space of their absence I'm finding my Lost Boy's lost realty. I'm finding the land that I steward that got lost by me and found by them---the chewed up instruments that slum it behind desks. The hardly used pencils that live behind dressers because their erasers got used up. The pen caps that live with the pencils because they lost their meaning but had enough potential to stick around the neighborhood. Just In Case. I like them but I can't find proper homes for all of them, so I have to get the leftovers to hit the road.
I squat and I listen to each of their sad stories and it's sad because they each have the same story. When they're through telling their tale they wail and show me the chew marks and maneuver their way to a place where I can't say no. But I'm in no place and they can't see that, so I can say no. When I say no I say yes and the room sheds a million places.
I know that I have made enough space because the only things on the floor are feet. Clothes rack feet, dresser feet, table feet, poodle feet, trash can feet, briefcase feet, barstool feet, bed frame feet, futon feet, mouflon feet, easel feet, trestle feet, socks 'n feet. There's a typewriter with feet but its feet are so small and stubby and tucked underneath that they don't really count. So I prefer that the typewriter live on top of someone else with feet. When I've made enough space, I lie on the floor and stretch out, and my arms and my legs and my head and my hip bump into all the feet. But the stretching feels good and tender and energizing and the sunlight shows up and we lie in each other.
Then I leave the room, I leave all the feet and I leave the sunlight.
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