If you open me now, she says, you’ll see
all my yesterdays carefully put up
like home-canned tomatoes, peaches, pickles,

beans—the bounty of summer stored against
the coming winter years of solitude
and forgetfulness. Look, that streak across

the middle shelf—my eldest in her cleats.
I have her letter jacket and three-sport
award here, too, and the bins of my son’s

Lego blocks, his hunched and careful building
those hours in the living room, his drum
sticks still taped in band colors. I feel them

in my hands, my heart, his rhythm. Funny,
the things you keep. My mother teaching me
how to iron a man’s button-down dress shirt

(my father’s, of course), telling me to keep
my legs crossed, and laughing. Dad, leather gloves,
spray starch, his endless ground war with the weeds,

model trains he didn’t like me to touch.
The ex is in there, too, and the first time.
And, God, a lot of wild-tailed, mixed-breed dogs.

It’s okay. You can look, she says. I know,
nothing special, nothing you won’t find
inside everyone. Yes, there’s room for more.