shoebox

(this always happens when i procrastinate during general cleaning. or when i reread old emails. today is both.)

oct 2013 - cluj/montreal

whatever i don't remember should go. 

these are things only i remember. if i let go

they will fall to ashes feeding the grounds of the unconscious

sprouting new uncontrollable things. i won't allow them this.

i want to keep them for what they are.

who else has a use for this box, in which my red shoes

shone so brightly 10 years ago, the fall of my first commute? 

who else can make anything of its current contents? the drunken note i wrote

 the night of that breakup, curled up on the carpet by the phone.

a metro map of downtown toronto, a direction map in pencil

on the back of a coaster. a portrait on a napkin. a stolen

swizzle stick. plane tickets for every travel ever,

pressed down by folded paper cranes, for wishes.

it's only me who remembers every wish.

i want to keep them off landfills, papermills,

off the indifference of trashcans and gloved hands. to keep

myself off being chewed, digested, streamlined, forgotten

even by myself - memories of me shifting through years

like leaves on a deciduous tree.