More Than You Bargained for in the Attic
By Don Iannone

A single naked light bulb dangles
weak illuminations on a shattered past,
like old cracks in the tarnished silver mirror
your grandmother used morning and night
to comb her long flowing golden hair
long before you knew her.
Faded dreams stare back at you
like haunting crimson devil eyes
from the other side of the mirror.
An ugly place you never intended to go
but found yourself crying tears of protest
like swollen rivers after a torrential rain.
Heavily fingered black and white polaroids--
stark images of colorless times
when secrets overshadowed life's mysteries
and we were even greater slaves to our past.
Hoping deep inside for buried treasure--
finding salt rubbed in sacrificial wounds
too old to bleed, too deep to heal.
Musty smells igniting off-centered memories
belonging to someone other than you
but now you, because you looked and saw them.
An old pressed flower in yellowed wax paper
dredges up the shrill piercing sound
of the 3:13 AM coal train
whose horn haunts you still
like the night your cousin died.
No ghosts, but even worse
realities too intense to bear
shaken loose from the album in your aging hands
and now forever a part of you.