Kevin Ridgeway

SELF-STORAGE 

AS SELF-SABOTAGE

It’s expensive 

to cling to the physical 

manifestations of the past

on a suburban refugee’s 

modest urban budget–

my storage unit costs me

a couple hundred a month,

and it’s full of things 

I’ve realized I can 

just take pictures of

and discard, heavy trinkets

of my former lives 

left at the roadside behind me 

on a long journey forward

that’s expensive on its own. 

Memories don’t cost a thing,

but the fog of time is a taxation  

the universe offers me as I age

and begin to forget who I was

and where I used to come from.

It’s hard enough trying 

to figure out who I am now 

or what I’m going to collect next 

like dust under my fingernails,

with no room for any more junk

until I look under my bed  

and figure out what to do 

with the many random things 

that I forgot were even there,

like most of the many items

that have proven to own me

more than I think I own them.  

   

Kevin Ridgeway is the author of Too Young to Know (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Invasion of the Shadow People (Luchador Press, 2022) and Death of the Coppertone Girl (Luchador Press, 2025).  His work has appeared in Hiram Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, Gargoyle, Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Heavy Feather Review, San Pedro River Review and Trailer Park Quarterly, among others. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, he lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.