A pair of shoes not yet discarded.
Your fingers tied those laces.
Gray hairs lodged in a comb–not mine.
My hair’s been blonde for ages.
Frizzled whiskers fused to a rusty razor
share a drawer with one lone battery
designed for a hearing-aid not worn.
Did you desire silence, or was it vanity?
A golf ball scrawled with your initials
somehow crawled unnoticed into
a darkened space until it’s spied,
gently lifted, held briefly to my face.
Folders labeled ‘Old Receipts’
hold simply stated old receipts.
Another file–‘For your eyes only’
is strangely, starkly empty.
Lost in the fridge ‘til now unseen–
remnants of your favorite sauce.
Rancid mixture: furry green
mayo, garlic, lemon, salt.
I seal these traces of the found–
and lost: laces, gray hair, comb,
whiskers, razor, battery,
golf ball, folders.
The molded sauce is tossed.
Jan Chapman
February, 2011
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