As a kid, I fill
notebooks
with beginnings of
diaries -
This summer,
I promise,
I will write every day.
But all these
beginnings
I leave without
endings,
leave so many
stories
incomplete
on the page.
While my words
are still
waiting,
I keep
ticket stubs,
photographs,
wedged
between
pages,
fragments
without
narrative,
except in my head.
I mourn
moments
unwritten,
as they slip
between
floorboards,
and sink below
oceans
of everyday
things.
But months,
and years,
since I wrote the first
sentences,
made a promise of
more
that I never did keep,
I still find the small
scrap
with a sketch of a
seashell,
and stand for a
moment
with my toes
in the sand.
Though my
words
never came
with
specifics in sentences,
not everything
unwritten
is forgotten,
is lost,
And a fragment
can function
as a map
to a memory,
And my past
summer self
is with me
again.