Fragile
overseeing maneuvers she shouts orders to
brothers an assembly line tossing boxes
from truck to garage belongings enter
the house passing hand to hand
when everything stops
a crash on the concrete fragile hand printed
in caps by china—silence then clattering
as the lid opens to the shattered pieces
of yard sale plates bought en route
to produce the first laughs
to welcome them home
to recall years later
after he slips off
his ladder onto
that spot
and everything stops
brothers an assembly line tossing boxes
from truck to garage belongings enter
the house passing hand to hand
when everything stops
a crash on the concrete fragile hand printed
in caps by china—silence then clattering
as the lid opens to the shattered pieces
of yard sale plates bought en route
to produce the first laughs
to welcome them home
to recall years later
after he slips off
his ladder onto
that spot
and everything stops
A graduate of Middlebury College, Elaine Wilburt received a 2019 Creatrix Haiku Award and lives in Maryland with her husband, five children, mother and one spoiled dog. Her fiction and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cresset, Little Patuxent Review, Broad River Review, Heart of Flesh and Ekphrastic Review, among others. She volunteers as a copy editor for Better Than Starbucks.
Art: No Parking, Part II by Kristin LaFollette