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