I find it more than a little difficult

to let things go.

My apartment is strewn with bits of paper:

old cookie fortunes, bus passes,

parking tickets, anything

I think I might need and a hundred things

I know I won’t.

Still,

I keep them, pressed

between the pages of books,

hidden under flowerpots,

scraps of memory

shoved beneath bed frames.

 

I find it difficult

to let you go.

My mind is littered with snapshots:

a shark in the stairs,

a laughing drug dealer with steady hands,

orange streetlights spilling

on a cracked sidewalk.

And my mind wonders,

“What if I need you?”

So,

I keep you, pressed

between the halves of my brain,

hidden beneath my tongue,

your name, pinned,

just between my shoulder blades.