In my old bedroom I reach for boxes
and the dust of undisturbed years rises
in the afternoon light. As children we drew

our names on such powdery floors. I flick
through high school report cards, forgotten
library books, letters now tearing and flaking.

My hand pauses on an envelope, sealed but unsent.
On the front, the name of our neighbours,
on the back, above the name of my family, I slide
a finger under the flap and tear open the years.
Inside, I find, on a Christmas card two decades old,
a greeting to the tailor next door, who has since died,
in the writing of my father, who has since died.

How brief and irretrievable our actions,
the writing and the forgetting,
and the lives that unfolded from them.
Opening a letter not addressed to me,
I wonder if I am stealing a gift,
or completing a small, necessary ritual.

In the dusty room I say their names out loud
and place the card again among the old papers.

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