Not this life

Where do twenty years go? And how
many boxes can contain life’s essentials
stored regretfully in an empty room?

Years stacked up against each other,
one on top of another, but not necessarily
in chronological order.

Nineteen eighty-eight sits awkwardly
with nineteen ninety-six
and two thousand and two is crumpled

in a heap in the corner, rubbing
shoulders with the elbows of four
or five more years, eventful years:

not one will ever come again.

Paintings and prints lean patiently,
almost with no interest in the outcome,
against the barest wall. A frying pan,

bought in France maybe and carted home,
rests adjacent to twelve or thirteen
albums of photographs that span the years

we never thought would end until
they ended, not as one might wish
they’d end but like an appalling soap opera,

a version of events going on elsewhere
in someone else’s life.