(An ordinary receipt, doing a better job of keeping track of my life than I do.)
I found it by accident –
a small, crumpled record
of a day I apparently lived
without noticing.
It listed nothing remarkable:
coffee, bread,
a moment I must have walked through
on my way to somewhere else.
It had the date,
the time,
even the cashier’s name –
someone who greeted me
with a politeness
I must have returned
without thinking.
The total was modest.
The moment even more so.
Yet here it was,
surviving longer
than whatever thought
I was having at the time.
A thin strip of paper,
keeping better records
than my memory ever bothered to keep.
It knows the hour
I stood in a line,
the exact cost
of an ordinary afternoon.
Meanwhile I was thinking
about something else entirely –
tomorrow, perhaps,
or some small worry
that has already dissolved.
The receipt remembers
with perfect patience.
I’ve already forgotten the afternoon.
But the receipt
still knows
exactly
when it happened.