i found our younger selves today tucked away
in a box in a corner of the basement,
the you of then not even ten years older
than the me of now. she kept it all, you know —
the ticket stubs, the handbills, the concert notes,
the wobbly-handed watercolor paintings of a six-year-old.
and here i am, thirty years later, turning it
over like the layers of an archeological dig.
who determines what an artifact is worth?
who says which remnant of a life
is more valuable, more enduring than the next?
i found our younger selves in a box today;
i wonder if anyone will care for the keeping.
