Obsolete

The drawer handle came off in my hand like a scab

so I used the dull side of a knife to get in,

past the tangled twine and the menus for places

that haven't delivered since the turn of the century.

At the very back, under a pile of dead AA batteries,

I found the radiator key, heavy and blunt,

clotted with a film of twenty-year-old kitchen grease.

We haven't had the old boiler since the summer

the pipes nearly burst and the basement flooded,

yet here it is, a cold bit of iron flaking rust

into the deep crease of my lifeline,

waiting for a valve that has already been scrapped.