The cardboard boxes labeled and neatly stacked
contain what he once thought was the sum of his life:
birth certificate, marriage license, college degree,
what he wrote on legal pads, napkins, scraps of paper
after long walks in the snow, jungle afternoons of heat and rain,
birthday cards, trophies, newspaper clippings, souvenirs,
once important legal files that no longer have meaning,
and he has paid to store them here year after year
for someone to come and throw them away
The cardboard smells rank of formaldehyde and dead insects,
the invaders and thieves of everything he valued,
his grade school friends, the men and women he worked with,
the revelers at restaurants and bars, the strangers who shared
one time moments in airports on the way to nowhere
The photo albums have become too painful to open
and who will frame the pictures and hang them
on their walls when there is so much of life yet to see?
He overhears another man in the next unit joking
to himself or an invisible companion,
“You cain’t drag a UHaul into heaven,”
spitting out the word, “junk!” time to time
in a harsh voice sounding of final judgment
And he knows it’s true and he knows that all he has
he carries in his head and in the next step he takes
out into the sunlight and into the wind rearranging
the last of his hair and remainder of his moments
Not worth the time to arrange for an estate sale
or leave in a will for someone who will pay
someone else to haul it to the nearest landfill
and return it to the earth