AUCTION PICK-UP

When I worked for the auction house last summer,
I got to know what the inside of rich people’s houses
Looked like after they died, when their families
Decided the antiques didn’t match the solar panels
And were better off turned into cash, so they hired
Zach and he hired me and we went into the manor
Of a retired New Hampshire politician to catalog
Half a century of collecting. Each piece was labeled
With a round numbered sticker, like pennies
Used to hold closed the eyes of a corpse,
So that I could run up and down the narrow stairs
Hunting for overpriced frames and footstools
To ferry down to their new owners; my task
Was retrieving purchases, so I got to know
The house, the extension with its indoor pool,
The basement full of fine China, the bedroom
Where the matriarch died, her size nine shoes
Lined up in the closet and sold as a lot, loaded
Into three bins by a fleshy woman in a sun dress
Whose husband parked on the manicured lawn
Too close to the azaleas, just starting to litter
The mulch with their highlighter petals.
Each receipt was highlighted, the numbers
Of the purchased antiques and household goods
Bright pink against black and white photos,
Which were helpful for Marney who owns an antique store
And knows Zach from years of buying
So she is allowed to bring her Shih Tzu into the house
While she wraps Limoges plates in the kitchen
And admires the chandelier, slipping me twenty bucks
To help her carry it all out to the car
Because young women have it harder in this business
Where the average customers are retired
White men over the age of fifty-five
Who always know better, especially
When it comes to the American Revolution. Zach told her
That I am an “archives major at the John Hopkins,”
Which is close enough and summarizes
My employable skills, so I tell her I love books
And know more about bindings than I actually do
From repairing an 1874 Tennyson a week
Prior, but that there were no books of interest
In this auction so I didn’t bid on anything
For my personal collection. I don’t say
The prices were too high for my student budget
Because wealthy deaths attract wealthy flies
And I couldn’t wave them off with my bidding paddle.
The dead woman had taste, and I admire
The medieval mural in her parlor and pillows
Embroidered with unicorn tapestries
Like those in the Met Cloisters, Zach’s favorite
Museum and one of mine, so he tells me
That she painted that mural before she died
In between fighting to keep abortion legal
And serving in the senate, and I remember
That I am in a dead woman’s house,
A stranger handing over her belongings
To more strangers who now own
Pieces of her soul. No one bought the pillows
So I asked Zach if I could put one in my car
And he huffed as though they were his pillows
Before letting me pick out my favorite
While no one else was around to see,
A drug deal by the brick fireplace
Robbed of its lion andirons by an interior designer
Doing a mansion in Rhode Island, carried down
The street to a U-Haul with an Arizona butterfly on the side.
At the end of the day, I take my stolen red pillow
And a few lukewarm water bottles from the fridge
For the drive to Tessa’s graduation party, saying goodbye
To the house where I passed nine hours
With its medieval mural and now-empty rooms
And try to think of how many ways
I can describe my college experience to polite parents
As a fire pit threatens to scorch “Class of 2022”
Right off Tessa’s party banner.

Katherine Budinger is a third-year Johns Hopkins University student majoring in Writing Seminars and English. When she is not drinking tea, she can be found in the theatre as an actor and playwright, wandering through museums, or toiling away at another novel. She recently spent a term at the University of Oxford where she studied Oscar Wilde and began her fifth novel.