Terminal

You get good at letting go.

 

You help him sort through a house of relics;

maneuvering amongst squat towers of flagship papers

from port cities

whose names he used to know.

 

He cannot read them,

but he cannot throw them out.

 

You get good at letting go,

but 

 

They surface sometimes—

the portraits of the girls you loved

and the records of the secrets

you swore always to keep

that now you can’t remember—

the first survivors of a flooded basement.

Faces warped and ink blurred

floating to the surface,

but

you can’t make them out anymore.

 

there are letters too,

innumerable envelopes to sift into order,

the senders mostly dead,

the recipient halfway there.

 

   cannot

      cannot

 

You think about throwing yourself over

and letting the ocean freeze you through

and spit you out

shaking, and waking,

in a land that suits you better,

 

but

 

You sort the papers first

by Atlantic and Pacific—

the oceans he once left them by.

It is the smells that go first.

Then the touch—the names—

still you think you might hear a voice

but at the end,

the faces.

 

   cannot

      cannot

 

You get good at letting go

and then you get better.