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a piece by riley young

7/8/20

COSMIC COVE GALAXY

the kid sat before a dusty old table
in a dark room, she pulled over a desk lamp
and flicked on the switch,
spilling warm yellow light over the box,
the tape felt softer after years in the dark attic
and the print hid from the glow.

she took her mother’s rusty stanley knife
that she found in her desk drawer one day,
and cut into the fraying tape, covering her eyes and mouth
from the plumes of dust spilling forth,
she waved her arm in front of her face,
and then it settled aside her.

her grandfather was an inventor, you see,
the kid took a tiny slide of film
and slotted it between two mirrors,
turning a crank to power the tiny bulb,
she saw the photograph flood the walls of the room,
through some arcane methods, she wondered
if she could reach out and touch the rough nose
of the zebra she met at the zoo
when she was five.

wrapped in a protective cloth,
another box whirred and clicked,
switching between reels of tape
with every few seconds, he called it a
‘way of remembering things
when you forget how to remember things’,
she held her ear close to the tiny speaker
and she heard through the dust and debris;
her grandmother with her old dog;
wind howling through an open window,
now boarded up and rotting
and covered with a cream curtain;
cacophonous shouts and cheers from down on the street,
after he accidentally hit record,
and under the noise of compounded years,
she heard herself,
narrating a story about dinosaurs.

there was a blue and black teddy bear,
sealed in a plastic bag. her eyes were held on by threads
and her fur stood on end. she was missing an arm.
a small scribbled note was placed inside
about a dramatic lakeside rescue
and a small girl in a dark blue cowboy hat.

a letter was addressed to her,
lodged inside the seam of the box,
where she was told to look -
it held a transcription of a dream she had,
when camping in the wilderness one year in june.
schematics were drawn in soft pencil lines,
of columns of white marble, as high as the clouds,
and gears with tiny eyes and mouths, ascending a scale,
to a vast path of shimmering light, over the water,
building a bridge to the summer’s sky.