Catalog

Sometimes you make lists.
Things I did.
Things I did for you.


I don't have a list.
I have a terrible memory;
this is a fact.
Entire decades of my life
are blurry ideas to me:
fading sepia tucked in silver corners.
I could not have told you
with any authority
what I did at five
or fifteen
twenty five
or last week.

So I rely on your lists.
Perhaps number twenty seven is true. Or ninety one.
Perhaps those are the things you did for me.


Some things I remember,
but then you deny them,
and I become confused.
Perhaps I remember it wrong.

Perhaps I remember it all
wrong.
This is both terrible
and terrifying.

Perhaps I should make a list.
Things I could, maybe,possibly have done for you.

But you never ask for that list,
you never did,
you were smart: you chose things that are
over the things that could be.