What Got Sealed Away

The real estate listing shows it better than I remember—

the concrete walls, the bare bulb hanging,

the smell of rust and old dirt

compressed into pixels on my screen.

The cellar is in every photo, even the ones

of upstairs rooms, like the agent knew

to keep it visible, to keep it present.

My grandmother took me down once.

The hatch was a mouth in the kitchen floor,

and the ladder was cold through my socks.

She showed me the jars—preserves, maybe,

or just things she wanted to keep

away from the heat. The air down there

didn't move. It just waited.

In the listing photo, there's no hatch.

The floor is smooth concrete now,

a blank face where the entrance used to be.

The description says "sealed for safety" but

I know it's because someone was afraid

of what grows in the dark when

you leave it alone too long.

I close the laptop. The house is being sold

to people with children. They'll run

through the kitchen and never know

there was an underground. They'll paint

over the place where the floor was different,

where a hatch used to interrupt

the regular geography of their lives.

My hands are cold. I don't know why

I looked it up. I don't know what I wanted

to find down there that would be

different from what I remember—

just a basement full of nothing,

just a place you went to hide.