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How To Clean Out Your Brother’s Car After He Dies
Take a deep breath. Find his keys from the pocket of his leather jacket, your tote bag, and go to his
parking spot. Open the door and sit inside. Feel the seat fabric against the back of your legs and smell
the vanilla air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror. See the halls cough drops he always kept in
the cup holder and put them in your pocket. You will never use them, but keep them on your nightstand
in a little heart shaped cup. Open the glove box and put everything inside your tote bag. Notice the CD's
he kept here. Put them all in the tote bag. You will listen to the Frank Sinatra one that night. Start the car
to push the button of the CD player to see if there is still one inside. The Doors. Of course. Turn the car
off and find the empty case in your tote, place the CD inside, and snap it closed. Put it back in your tote.
Notice his winter gloves tucked above the visor, take them. The leather scent reminds you of him. Put
them in your tote. Take his sunglasses. Take the folded map, the scratch paper, the pen, the small packet
of tissues, the peppermint life savers he loved. Take everything. Put them in your tote. Make sure you
have everything from the front seat. Then you check the back seat. Take the snow brushes, the winter
hat, and the pizza menu that he will never use again. You open the trunk. There is a cardboard box with
his winter kit: a candle, matches, half-filled bottles of motor oil, a tire pressure gauge, a stretched out
old sweatshirt. Take it all. Take very piece of him you can find.
- Verna Austen
Verna Austen received her MFA in Creative Writing from The Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. She has previously been published in Flying Island Journal, The Minnetonka Review, The Dead Mule, and elsewhere. She is a native and resident of Chicago, Illinois.