Where are all our wooden boxes?
Their bronze gilded edges
and old price sticker glue.

We worried them away from charity shops,
haggled over foreign coins in bazaars.
They travelled by the heat of our legs
cradled, but chipped from the bumps in the tar.

Like Russian dolls from different cultures,
dysfunctional birds of a feather
storing together
Our lives segmented then closed in the dark.

Wraps of late nights and later mornings
Odd earrings, shells, letters and old keys
the leftovers of utmost importance
Finger sized buoys steady through our coastal breeze.

Do they still nestle in your corners?
Wearing blankets of somebody else's skin.

Are they still filled with our faded receipts now?
Or hollow from within.