To purge or keep, we sort our stacks:
the brochures and maps of cities
we have been or hoped to visit.
In time it all merges, becomes a blur.
Souvenirs that no longer spur memories.
The objects that held such sacred space
in my family home will have no meaning
to my children when I’m gone. Will they
and the things I touched end up in the bin,
or will my survivors do as I do, hold each one,
in a kind of reverence, agape, at everything
my mother touched with her dematerializing skin?
