What We Keep
We do not keep the day.
The day goes.
We do not keep the room,
the weather,
the sound of a voice
before it became a memory.
We keep a small thing.
A photograph.
A note.
A song.
A ticket folded twice.
Something without value
to anyone else.
And somehow
it holds everything.
Not the past.
Not really.
A door to it.
We live surrounded
by things that can be saved.
Thousands of photographs.
Endless messages.
Every place, every date,
every passing moment
stored somewhere.
Perhaps remembering
is not the act of saving.
Perhaps it is the act
of choosing.
Of taking one thing
from the endless stream
and saying:
stay.
Not because it is old.
Not because it is rare.
Because, for reasons
we may never fully explain,
it matters.
And maybe that is all
a memory asks of us:
not to keep everything,
but to know
what we cannot bear
to lose.