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.