Tendency

The people carrying box fans on
their backs stop for a moment to
wash the mud off their hands in the stream.
Without thinking the passenger throws
a plastic wrapper over his shoulder into
the backseat, forgetting that this was
his friend’s car, and quickly turns around
to try and find it on the floor.
There’s always so much more in the corners
of these structures than we think there is
because we have a tendency to underestimate
what we don’t spend our time looking at.
She peels the skin off a baseball then tries
to unwind the endless layers of thread
underneath it. The stacks of flattened
milk cartons from way back in the
seventies has risen to the same height
as our house.