My attic sweats through July.
Everything up there warps eventually.

My Atari still has Japanese lettering
on the box.
I never learned Japanese.
My grandfather learned enough
Japanese to get by.
The joystick made him anxious.

He held it like he held his pocketknife,
then spent an hour making two G.I. Joes
high-kick each other across the carpet
while the television flickered blue light
across his glasses.

My mother called him a hoarder.
This means after he died
she sold his life by the pound.

An antique dealer weighed his medals
in one hand like loose change.

I stole back the patches
and hid them inside a silverware box
beside forks nobody wanted.

My attic smells like fall leaves
and wet cardboard.

Every summer the humidity worsens.
The Atari shell curls inward slightly.
By August, everything up there
fits differently in my hands.
The edges soften first.

I keep checking the medals for rust
that never comes.