Sled
By R James Sennett Jr
My old sled hung in Aunt Tiss’s garage like a tattered old towel.
On trips North, we’d visit it like a mummy in the Carnegie Museum.
Untouched, dusty, deteriorating slowly into Pennsylvania detritus.
Used only a few times, it was familiar and foreign to me at the same time.
Not sure why it wasn’t sold or given away but kept.
Fingerprints barely visible, radiating memories.
Warmer than the snow it once plowed.
The stories still present but fading incrementally like the red paint on the sled’s carcass.
Evaporating tears dripping.
Dare I snatch it from its eroding concrete perch,
plop it in the snow,
and slip away
in time?
