Spring Cleaning (#1)

Folding back the years
Feels like the diary you wrote
And soaked in soapy water
Words you could never erase
Pages stuck to pulpy pages
Love buried somewhere inside

Now you are too big to hide behind sofas
Too lazy to lay out the tablecloth
Dealing out placemats like a stack of incomplete cards
...

Today you sweep between the gaps
Spaces where places and faces once filled
You shrug them off
Tidy them up
Replace them with vague feelings
And seal them
Ziplocked

If the past is a palace
There were some rooms you were never meant
To ruminate in
The attics where fights and scratches
Take up their throne
And bitter arguments echo

But you are tempted:
So you dig through the dirt
In the trunks of your mind
Like old vinyls they skip
Over the nightmares
Replaying the gossip of bushes
Where you hide and seek

And then there are more diaries
Like the one that earned you a ride in the car at dawn
And Post-Its pushed under doors
For weeks to come

Now, these are things that make you smile
Awkwardly

It is good to turn over these memories
Wipe them
Down
Write them down
Iron out gaps
And pick at their corners

If you can just pass over the vacuum
Lightly
If you can tread the memories over
Without leaving your own present-day stamp
If you can hold your sneezes
While dusty memories rise in your head
Then you won't damage the blossoming future
With these cobwebbed pasts