Yard Sale Poem by Derek Ouyang

We are having a yard sale today.
Hold the door open for me, Mother says
As she carries a box out onto the driveway
And the cats scramble out for fresh air
While Father paces out back, scratching his head
And my brothers sit inside, sipping Pepsis
I follow Mother out into the cold
And ask her if she needs help

She smiles and says, Oh Jamie
You were always the one who wanted to help
Then sets the box down before me and asks
Could you make sure we got everything?
Before she runs inside to yell at Father
There are grey clouds in the sky
And I too, am a darker shade of grey
As I begin to sift through my childhood...

The soccer ball my brothers and I lost
Religiously, once, twice, thrice a week
Over the backyard fence and into
The neighbor's yard, where the dog awaits
I ring on Mr. Ryan's doorbell in shame
Like I've just murdered the President
And Puppy covers me with slobber
My corporal punishment, I guess

The old phones we used before the new ones
White and bulky, trailing tangly cables
That I curled around my finger as I
Listened to my grandfather speak to me
Across thousands of miles of water
You don't have to reply, Father says
He can't hear you, his ears are bad
But I yell into the receiver anyway

The vocabulary book Mother made me study
In preparation for standardized testing
For so many hours I could swear I had lost
A part of my soul, memorizing diaphonous
Until it literally lost all its meaning
So I take revenge on her by using big words
She doesn't understand, like fastidious
Mother, why must you be so fastidious?

The cap and gown I wore five years ago
On graduation day, when it rained
Even though Father said it wouldn't
So all his pictures came out bad
And as the sky fell upon our field
We threw our mortarboards up in defiance
Announcing our presence in this world
And at the same time, our weight...

It is starting to rain now.
Hurry Jamie, Mother yells
Bring the box back inside
She holds the door open for me
And I run through as fast as I can
To find that Father is singing
And my brothers are laughing
And Mother is smiling

Some things are not for sale