Yesterday alone I laid everything out on the carpet
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Books, kitchen things, objects
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With specific purpose or none
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Arranged them sideways in a grid
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On the floor there, unmoored
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Out of context and then considered it
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First the whole picture, then everything individually
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Humming along at the deadest pace imaginable
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One object, then another, and then the next
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And I wondered what they meant there
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If they meant anything still
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Found notes,
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Camping supplies,
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A book you bought in the desert,
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'Identifying Wildflowers'.
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Pictures from vacations,
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From parties,
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Kitschy gifts we bought from rest stops
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On that road trip out West
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Objects,
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Everything itself
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And then memory
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All of it laid out there
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In the dining room
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The living room
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The hallway, and the basement, and the kitchen
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From that room we called the office
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But never used
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In the bathroom
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Everything laid out there on the floor
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On the carpet, out of context
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And I sat there for hours
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Today I moved everything from the floor
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To the table in the dining room
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Placed each thing carefully without reason
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Or at least without one I understood or could describe
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There, on the table, together and when I was done
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I stepped back I realized what I had made
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Keepsakes, pictures, letters
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Ordinary objects all collected there
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A memorial
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And I thought of ones on highways or set by gravestones
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All the things you see there but don't understand
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But still bring a remembered thing back vividly
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Invoke someone's reality when there together
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In that place in that way out of context
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And I knew I had to take it down
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Before anybody else saw
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Tomorrow I plan to put them all somewhere
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Those things
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In boxes
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Side of the road
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Attic maybe
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All these things that push and pull me through history
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To places I once was, places I might have gone,
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Places I ended up going
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Postcards
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Ticket stubs from one thing or another
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A personalized coffee mug neither your name nor mine
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Phone cards and old phones
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A page from an old calendar I bought once
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At a thrift store and insisted on hanging
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That cycles of the moon print
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Photos
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Old boots of mine
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Put them in boxes
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And I sat there for hours
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In the living room first
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Then in the dining room
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Moving things around
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Picking things up and seeing where they took me
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To what place in history
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What moment on our timeline
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Where we were, where I was, where I thought we'd end up
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In this house or on the highway
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Driving somewhere near Christmas
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In the desert or anywhere else
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And I put them in boxes
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-----------------
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Objects in Space
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| La Dispute |
