Memory has a way of towering over the present
the way the meadows are greener in England,
the wines more red in France. I have binned
your letters and clothes and books, yet balk
at scrapping your license or your business card.
I keep them clipped to the dollars you didn't spend.
What you've never tasted or opened — oh, it's of no profit,
this mourning of a life you wouldn't have lived
even if you'd had the heart for it. Still, against the clock,
I fan out the ticket stubs, shuffle the IOUs
forever molded to my heart's soiled shell
as if this time what you'd carried might hold
more than the shape of what you failed to play.

Peg Duthie works as a copyeditor in Nashville, Tennessee. Her poems have appeared in earlier issues of flashquake and elsewhere.