There’s a way to remember everything.

It’s a matter of envelopes, and freezers,
forgetting what should go where.

Sure, things are made in China,
made in the USA.
But for whom, and why?

That sort of scissors-looking thing
in the kitchen –
you can’t recall how to work it,
what it’s supposed to do.

But if you made up something new for it to do,
you wouldn’t have to remember

what They wanted you to do with it.
And if you put envelopes in freezers,

sometimes you might remember they are where
they aren’t supposed to be,

and before
frost forms on the glue strip,

your geography blows open. But
you have to start small.

Begin with envelopes, with freezers.
Invent new names and places

to liberate what’s lost and found,
until forgetting is all you do.
And when there is only forgetting,

it’s not forgetting any more.

(First published in Bond Street Review, Winter 2024. Thanks to editor Eric Evans.)