Poems

 Ways of Remembering

There are many ways to remember.

The mind keeps dates,
the body keeps weather—
the particular cold of a hallway,
the warmth of a hand
resting briefly on your shoulder.

Some memories arrive as pictures.
Others return as habits:
a cup placed on the same side of the table,
a name almost spoken,
a door we still close gently
though no one is sleeping.

I have forgotten entire years
and remembered a single afternoon
with impossible clarity—

light through a curtain,
dust turning slowly in the air,
someone laughing
from another room.

Perhaps remembering
was never meant to be exact.

Perhaps we carry the past
not as an archive,
but as a language
we are always translating—

losing a word here,
inventing another there,
trying to tell the story
of who we were

to the person
we have become.

 The Space Between

There is a space
between one thought
and the next.

Small enough
to go unnoticed,
wide enough
to disappear inside.

It is where the unsaid waits,
where forgotten names
almost return,
where a memory stands
at the edge of itself
without asking to be recognized.

I have begun to wonder
if this is where we live most honestly—

not in certainty,
but in the pause before it.

Between remembering
and forgetting.

Between holding on
and opening the hand.

Between the person
I thought I would become
and the person
quietly standing here.

There is no name
for this distance.

Only the strange tenderness
of knowing

that not everything empty
is missing.

 Holding What We Cannot Keep

We spend our lives
learning how to hold things—

a hand,
a promise,
a photograph
softening at the edges.

We keep letters in drawers
long after the words
have changed their meaning.

We remember voices
until we can no longer tell
whether we hear them
or only remember hearing them.

Still,
we keep trying.

As if loving something deeply enough
might persuade time
to leave it untouched.

But everything asks
to be released eventually—

the afternoon,
the season,
the face in the mirror,
the version of ourselves
who believed
there would always be more time.

Maybe holding
was never about keeping.

Maybe it is simply this:

to receive what comes
with both hands,

to know that it will leave,

and to love it
while it is here.