In the Attic

Leaves have fallen
many times over,
covering the forest floor
the way the loose pages
have spilled from
Pop-Pop's binders.

Picking them up, I
realize they're not the
random bits of this
and that I had thought
they were when we
played our games among
the totes and chests and
Nana's stacked Avon boxes
under the slanted roof of
their old home.

Children handle things in
play without a care as
to what they are, only
what they need to be.

So umbrellas are guns or
swords, while the simplest of
bathrobes are fit for a
king, and the papers we used
for deeds and orders and
wills and secret spy stuff (or
the occasional love letter if the
girls were playing that day) have
their own reality as well.

Imagine the smile in
eyes as well as heart on
finding out that Pop-Pop's papers
were all that we'd thought they
were and
more.