Objects in Space

Yesterday alone I laid everything out on the carpet

Books

kitchen things

objects with specific purpose or none

Arranged them sideways in a grid on the floor there unmoored

Out of context and then considered it

First the whole picture

then everything individually

Humming along at the deadest pace imaginable

One object

then another

and then the next

And I wondered what they meant there

If they meant anything still

Found notes

Camping supplies

A book you bought in the desert

"Identifying Wildflowers"

Pictures from vacations

From parties

Kitschy gifts we bought from rest stops

On that road trip out west

Objects

Everything itself

And then memory

All of it laid out there

From the dining room

The living room

The hallway and the basement and the kitchen

From that room we called the office but never used

Even the bathroom

Everything laid out there

On the floor

on the carpet

out of context

And I sat there for hours

Today I moved everything from the floor

To the table in the dining room

Placed each thing carefully without reason

Or at least without one I understood or could describe

There on the table together

And when I was done and stepped back

I realized what I had made

Keepsakes

pictures

letters

Ordinary objects all collected there

A memorial

And I thought of ones on highways or set by gravestones

All the things you see there but don't understand

But still bring a remembered thing back vividly

Invoke someone's reality when they're together

In that place

in that way

out of context

And I knew I had to take it down before anybody else saw

Tomorrow I plan to put them all somewhere

Those things in boxes

Side of the road

attic maybe

All these things that push and pull me through history

To places I once was

Places I might've gone

Places I ended up going

Postcards

Ticket stubs from one thing or another

A personalized coffee mug

With neither your name nor mine

Phone cards and old phones

A page from an old calendar I bought once

At a thrift store and insisted on hanging

That cycles of the moon print

Photos

old boots of mine

Put them in boxes

And I sat there for hours

In the living room first

Then in the dining room

Moving things around

Picking things up and seeing where they took me

To what place in history

What moment on our timeline

Where we were

where I was

Where I thought we'd end up

In this house or on the highway

Driving somewhere near Christmas

In the desert or anywhere else

And I put them in boxes