Words...

Cleaning Out the Attic
Union Hill, 6/22/12 0415

Minutes past the middle of the morning
Or the middle of an hour
Midway through the middle of the night
And the minutia has been gathering
As I sort through all the usta was
Bits of a paper person
Who she is and what she does
From pay stub to receipt
This is who I am supposed to be
I have forced my mind to focus
On each scrap of paper
Saved like shards of a broken heart
Collected over years
In cardboard boxes
And moved from state to state
Kept with me, kept close, kept safe
As if to prove that I was here
And all of this was really real
That period of fuzzy perception and diffuse pain
Is suddenly become clear again
The love seat beside me is littered
With letters from old lovers
And saved stamps from international mail
And the pile to file grows
While the garbage overflows
And I’ve got a long way to go
But I’m beyond the point of caring
I’ve caught myself staring off
Into the space between the molecules of air
Still, I’ve stopped myself from reading
The cards that I know will bring tears
But photographs are less concealed
Memories of past selves revealed
Ready or not, they come
Fodder to feed an evil dream on
If I should pass that way
When I finally slip into my subconscious
And I will know soon enough, if only because
I’m losing the battle against my eyelids