SWEPT CLEAN

Beauty lies in the eye(s) of the beholder.

I collect broken things. I’ve always been this way.

I’ve amassed an overflowing barn load of smashed, cracked, severed, and hopeless things, so much so that I had to buy a second barn and then another, and each had leaks, one a cracked foundation and the last a horde of fire ants and termites. I am a calculation of my evaluations and my compulsions.

So, I flip a coin. Heads it all goes; tails I buy a fourth barn. I flipped twice. Just to be sure.

The following day, I plaster the napping town with hand-scrawled signs: YARD SALE. SATURDAY ONLY. EVERYTHING MUST GO. Many of the signs blow off the telephone poles during a freakish hailstorm on Friday night. The old gods must be flipping coins, too, I muse.

It takes me hours to drag everything into the front yard and driveway. Stacks and stacks of cracked plates, five mismatched tea sets, a three-legged dining room table, five recliners that do not recline, one half of a hula hoop, a swing set with no swings, a tractor with no engine, a lawn mower with no blades, a refrigerator with no door, a stove without burners, five radios with no knobs, one boxing glove, a deck of forty-one playing cards, two pair of blank dice, three televisions with no tubes, a school bus without tires, six hammers without handles, a pocket watch without a fob, a bike without a seat, thirty picture frames without glass, a tuba without keys, a birdcage without a lock, a ladder without its first and top steps, a sail boat with a ruptured hull, a toaster without a cord, three-thousand nine-hundred bent nails, scores of puzzles with pieces missing, armloads of pot holders riddled with holes, a hearse without  a windshield, an ambulance without brakes or horn, three punctured soccer balls, one hundred and thirteen bald tires, twelve leaky gas cans, one ski, a knife block without knives, an hour glass sans sand, many, many headless Hummels, a merry-go-round without horses or carriages, a STO sign and a YI LD sign, a dripping bird bath, a cracked flute, a tricycle without handlebars, a piano missing ten keys, a sofa without cushions, an egg beater with one whisk, a porcelain cat with no tail, forty books without covers, twelve spent fire extinguishers, nineteen broken clocks all stopped at 11:16, two gold chains without clasps, three hundred pencils without erasers, six armless dolls, eight chifforobes without drawers, six shutters without hinges, a headless axe handle, twenty-two ripped mattresses, a ball of yarn twenty yards long…

I nearly block the sun.

I stand, my back to all of it. A mountain dedicated to other lives lived, a stacking reflection of mine. And they come. In droves. In streams. There are horse-drawn wagons, pick-up trucks, some on foot pulling carts, and others driving massive sedans, kids whirling in the back. And they haul it all away, and me.

And I stand, my back now to nothing. The sun blows low on my calves, silent.

“What about you?” Her voice is idyllic, and it floats to my ears as a whippoorwill in song. Her eyes are clear as an Alpine lake. Cobalt.

"Well, my back is shot,” I reply. “My knees throb. I can't abide dairy. I struggle with other things, too; that doesn't make for polite conservation. Are you interested?”

“I believe I am. A dent here, a scratch there, is fine,” she says. “How much are you asking?”

“Everything,” I answer.

She offers me her open hand.

I am swept clean.