The Things You Lose
By: Scott Stolnack
The thieves come each night and empty another room.
You sit at the front door, a loaded shotgun across your knees,
thinking over my dead body yet somehow they come in while you’re looking the other way or through the back door or through cleverly hidden tunnels beneath the cellar. Why anybody in their
right mind would want this junk is a puzzle but it’s your junk goddammit
and you’ll cling to each tottering rotten stack of old magazines or
the deflated balloons tied to the baby’s crib the tattered prayer flags shredding in the wind last year’s wasp nest under the eaves of the garage
all the old people oh lord the bodies piling up all the old people
shuffling through the hallways or trudging into oblivion there they
all go they’ve all turned their backs gone off left you here by yourself.
The sea is lapping at your front porch. Mobilize the Corps of Engineers
if you can even get them on the phone get their attention somehow get out
the earth movers the heavy equipment reinforce that levee that seawall
shore up the crumbling foundation the teetering upper stories and
just like that while your attention is elsewhere there goes another room.
They got you looking out front and cleared out another one. Pretty soon
you’ll be down to this one small parlor with its fringe lamp and rickety
old table and the landline nobody uses. And then where will you be?
Guarding an empty house by yourself. Jesus Christ the shit you put up with. That’s all there is to say really. When you come right down to it. Jesus H. Christ.
Scott Stolnack has published in a wide range of forms, including science fiction, travel and adventure writing, scientific reports and peer-re-viewed research, poetry, and literary fiction. His poetry has appeared in Cascadia Rising Review, Prometheus Dreaming, and elsewhere. His short plays have been produced in the US and UK. Between 2008 and 2019, he was a senior biologist coordinating recovery of endan-gered salmon in the Seattle area.