The Kids in the Attic

They found the relics:
armor adorned
with patches, buttons, and spikes,
the belt buckles and guitar picks,
bottle cap pendants,
hoarded hotel room ashtrays, card-keys,
barroom coasters, concert posters
snatched from bricks and autographed
with Sharpie markers, sloppy set lists
finalized right before the show.

They tried to decipher
journal entries, pondered the pictures
of pirates dripping with sweat and tattoos.
They tried on the captain’s hat
and wondered out loud whose cleavage
is in that headless photograph.
They asked each other if it might be
booze in the pictured cup,
if mom and dad were together then,
and why was she kissing those other men.
They Googled the bands and listened
and wondered what exactly I was before a mother.