92 lines
2.5 KiB
Plaintext
92 lines
2.5 KiB
Plaintext
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Yesterday alone I laid everything out on the carpet
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Books, kitchen things, objects with specific purpose or none
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Arranged them sideways in a grid on the floor there unmoored
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Out of context and then considered it
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First the whole picture, then everything individually
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Humming along at the deadest pace imaginable
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One object, then another, and then the next
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And I wondered what they meant there
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If they meant anything still
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Found notes
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Camping supplies
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A book you bought in the desert
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"Identifying Wildflowers"
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Pictures from vacations
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From parties
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Kitschy gifts we bought from rest stops
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On that road trip out west
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Objects
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Everything itself
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And then memory
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All of it laid out there
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From the dining room
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The living room
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The hallway and the basement and the kitchen
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From that room we called the office but never used
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Even the bathroom
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Everything laid out there
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On the floor, on the carpet, out of context
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And I sat there for hours
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Today I moved everything from the floor
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To the table in the dining room
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Placed each thing carefully without reason
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Or at least without one I understood or could describe
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There on the table together
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And when I was done and stepped back
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I realized what I had made
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Keepsakes, pictures, letters
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Ordinary objects all collected there
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A memorial
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And I thought of ones on highways or set by gravestones
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All the things you see there but don't understand
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But still bring a remembered thing back vividly
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Invoke someone's reality when they're together
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In that place, in that way, out of context
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And I knew I had to take it down before anybody else saw
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Tomorrow I plan to put them all somewhere
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Those things in boxes
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Side of the road, attic maybe
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All these things that push and pull me through history
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To places I once was
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Places I might've gone
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Places I ended up going
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Postcards
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Ticket stubs from one thing or another
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A personalized coffee mug
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With neither your name nor mine
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Phone cards and old phones
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A page from an old calendar I bought once
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At a thrift store and insisted on hanging
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That cycles of the moon print
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Photos, old boots of mine
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Put them in boxes
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And I sat there for hours
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In the living room first
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Then in the dining room
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Moving things around
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Picking things up and seeing where they took me
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To what place in history
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What moment on our timeline
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Where we were, where I was
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Where I thought we'd end up
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In this house or on the highway
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Driving somewhere near Christmas
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In the desert or anywhere else
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And I put them in boxes
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______________________
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Name Objects in Space
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Artist La Dispute
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Album Rooms of the House
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