Packing

what do you do when your memories are made of pieces of tree bark,
pale robins' blue eggshells,
stones from all over the world,
and old skeeball tickets from someone else's Jersey shore?

how do you pack up a life into boxes that is made of
printed high school emails,
encyclopedias of internetic knowledge,
scraps of scribbled, inconsequential notes?

what if you are not a bird of the air, but one of the nest,
and instead wish to line it with all of them,
softly weave them into every corner,
so every memory, every spoken and forgotten word and moment and dream and embrace
is ever present?

I once had a jar of moonlight.
Twice I caught it like fireflies;
twice it left me.

I don't want my memories floating away like moonlight.

I want them surrounding me close,
in boxes and drawers, window-sills and journals,
so that one day when I can no longer remember the soft moonlight of my life,
it is still there, tangible.

As if I could reach out and touch those long-gone days.