Misplaced Things

Somewhere between yesterday and today,  

the scissors swam into oblivion.  

I remember their silver shimmer,  

like sunlight on a fish's back.  

My left sock eloped with the dryer,  

my favorite pen now a phantom.  

They leave no notes of departure,  

no postcards stamped "We'll be back soon."  

I once found my keys in the fridge,  

cold and smug beneath the butter.  

Phone sleeping heavy on bookshelves,  

its silence casting shadows on dust.  

But what really evades my grasp  

is the name of the street I grew up on,  

the last words my grandmother told me,  

the crisp, whole shape of my own edges.  

I am a curio cabinet of forgotten moments,  

each crevice lined with half-remembered songs.  

But isn’t it strange how I still know the tune  

of my mother's laughter, even in dreams?  

Scattered though I am, undone like thread,  

I weave a map out of memory’s frays.  

I lose things, yes, but not everything—  

not the heartbeat of what makes me, me.