THE POETRY LAB
THINGS I KEEP BETWEEN PAGES
I keep a feather
between pages twenty-two and twenty-three,
not because it is rare,
but because I found it
on the afternoon
I finally stopped being angry.
I keep a train ticket
inside an atlas,
although the train travelled
nowhere near the countries
on those maps.
I keep a dried yellow flower
inside a book about stars,
because memory
has never cared much
for correct categories.
Sometimes I open an old book
and something falls out:
a note,
a leaf,
a name
written in handwriting
I almost recognise.
Perhaps that is why
books grow heavier with time.
Not because of their pages,
but because we quietly place
our lives inside them.
And years later,
when we think
we are only returning
to a story,
the story opens us instead.
