When I was in eighth grade, I got detention. The only one I ever would.
With another girl who also went on to be a writer. A good one. A real one.
We were not detention girls.
The plan was to create a time capsule. Capture the essence and sparkle and unrest of 1991and save it from decay for a rainy day.
Keep a time that was so hard in the living but might be passingly pleasant with distant remembering.
What about putting something precious on a shelf while you still want it in your hands
Like taking freshly delivered flowers and hanging them upside down instead on a wall instead of right way up in a vase of water.
Keeping something to remember before it wilts. A memory of beauty before you put your hands around and turn it ugly with oiled prints
Shelf out of the way
Shelf I can’t see
Shelf I’d like to build in my heart if only
I had the support beams
To handle the screws
Close
Enough to get a hand on
Enough that if it fell the
Memory would break
At least one bone
Want to know it’s there
But not know
Because I don’t know
Leave it there long enough
Might be there for
The next tenant
Cobwebs and dust
Encroach and envelop
So it becomes part
Of the timber
That maybe you’ll forget
When you pack your boxes
And downsize
When your life
Moves on
Or you pry the wood
And take it
Splinters
Brackets
Paint chips
Reaffix to ribs
And fascia
Soft
And brittle
Carry your shelf
Until it becomes
You
Dust in your veins
Cobwebs in your valves
And the memory
Is all that lives
