Sunlight falls, echoing through cat furs and invisible dust drifting through the air.
An old wooden chest, hiding under a stack of quilts and blankets
Within, it holds adventures and secrets,
Playable mysteries with printed boards
and pearly dice, excitement or sometimes boredom in cardboard boxes.
The chest is far greater than what it holds,
The intricately painted sides are much older than they appear, it came from across the sea to this country before this country was fought for and created.
My sister and I dig beneath the blankets, open the lid and explore throughout the man-made canyons of stacked board games, from modern times and decades past.
We set the game on the living room aged carpet of blues and black.
A carpet that has traveled with us from our first house, that sat on a corner under the shade of tall oak trees that sheltered many a lost toy and scraped knee, to the house where my sister and I set up the board game.
Next to us, the cat worms his way under the sienna toned coffee table, another piece traveled from the first home to this one.
Carved within the sanded and polished surface are scratches and gouges from sources unknown, to ones unfortunately remembered.
The cat doesn’t know this, he simply finds solace in a cavity between the floor and a lower shelf of wood underneath the regular tabletop.
Stacked upon the lower shelf are tomes, recorded in great detail describing history or art.
Maybe once of great value to a studying student, but now they sit, abandoned
Replaced by a greater tome of unseen wires, circuits and infinite sources, whether trustworthy or not.
The cat still knows nothing of the stories the books contain both on the inside and out.
He watches us, while we laugh and groan, as the rules of the game frustrate and amuse us.
We don’t pay mind to the artifacts all around us
We don’t need to, they have been with us our whole lives and we know their stories.