HIS DESK

All the worthless shit he kept, you held. We

sorted and we pitched the bullets, vacant

statements, candy and coins in your rusty

file drawers. All chipped paint and dents, you

sat and bleached below the window. Inside

thirty years of old receipts and hidden

whiskey lived. Unoiled, you smelled like fear of

theft and misremembrance, eighty years of

Mitchum, underused guns, overcleaned. He

had you hide a holster filled with condoms.

He went out just like his mother: he slipped

his little money into books. Two whole

days we spent with you, liquidating the

remnants of inheritance and burning

his remains one invoice at a time.

We fluttered your books’ leafy pages, not

about to lose one bill in the binding.