the conquest of hoarding

M. A. Dubbs

At Nana’s house we set up base camp.

I create a tent of sheet and towel

while my cousin gather supplies.

North of the den lie the mountains:

piles of clothes, both dirty and clean,

tubs and trash bags, papers, empty bottles,

brand new shoes with tags still on,

all looming high over our heads.

Nonetheless we begin our trek,

guide-less but determined,

quickly ascending as junk groans

and crushes under our steps.

The hike starts easy, a quick tempo

until we pause at Camp 1.

We giggle underneath one of Nana’s dresses

and dig through a jewelry box

of costume pearls which we drape

around our throats.

The mountain inclines past our tent

so we take this part slow, careful of thin air,

and mindful of sickness this high up.

We come across a crevasse

so we tie panty hose around both of our waists

and place an iron board to connect trash piles.

I start crossing first, my ankles trembling

as the board wobbles and bends from my weight.

My cousin claps and begins to cross,

crawling on all fours like a bear on a log.

Suddenly, with a loud metal snap, the iron board buckles.

She jumps to me, misses, and clings

to the side of a pack of toilet paper.

The groin of panty hose tied between us

is taunt enough to slowly belay her up to me.

Camp 2 is quiet between us,

as we squat in a cardboard box,

eating stale Twinkies we found

just outside our route.

The last leg is the most treacherous.

The deathzone, we call it,

and we slide on our bellies toward the summit.

There’s many memories in this segment,

stored and frozen in the piles:

a dirty diaper from my cousin when she was a baby,

a picture of our uncle who passed before we were born,

an almost skeletal mouse in a trap,

crushed Bud cans from when pap used to drink.

Just shy of the top we hear the dreaded sound

of all hikers on this mountain:

the whoomping sound of Nana’s cane

as she forms a path to us.

She “tsks” us as we slide down the cliffs,

heads down in guilt,

and she gently lifts the faux pearls

off our small shoulders.

“I’ve been looking for these,” she smiles

as she caresses each strand.

She sets them back on the peak

and they glide back onto the slopes,

back into some segmented memory,

‘til we find them again.

M. A. Dubbs is an award-winning Mexican American and LGBT+ writer who hails from Indiana. For over a decade their writing has been published in literary magazines and anthologies across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. They served as judge for the 2022 Poetry Out Loud state competition and in 2021 released their debut book collection: Aerodynamic Drag: Poetry and Short Fiction. Find them at https://www.instagram.com/madubbspoetry/ and https://melindadubbs.wordpress.com/