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.