these things lie around patiently
even though it’s been years since anyone picked them up and looked at them
the books last opened 20 years ago, the objects that once gave us joy
and filled our days up
now sitting quiet, lonely, forgotten
on a shelf
in a corner of the house
where nobody dwells too long
and where eyes never fix and focus anymore
yet there they are, true, loyal
they never left
they have always been and will always be with you
and when things get tough
somehow they miraculously reappear
even though they’ve been there the whole time
you see them again
really see them
and they comfort you as you look at them
and rediscover the forms and features and lines and pictures that
have been left indelibly in you
that have shaped whole parts of you
and you pick them up and you hold them
and somehow they fill you up, they give you something
like hope, or comfort… something
and you can’t help but think they are just objects
dead, lifeless, inanimate, soulless
but somehow you never believe it
science has no say here
because these things have lived with you
they have been with you
their colors and contours, their shapes and masses
have helped form you
and you are not soulless, lifeless, or inanimate
these things
that have sat there and collected the dust of long days
that remain there miraculously even when nobody sees them
these heroic existences
are no longer (nor ever have been) mere things
they are old friends, these relics
and when we find them again after many years
when we hold them again in our hands
and see them again, really see them
we feel we have somehow been ungrateful to them
as if we owed them something
something they gave that was so precious
but which we never remembered or bothered to return
but this is a silly feeling
because when we hold them again
after all the years that have passed
and after all the good times we had without them
when we didn’t need them, when we were too strong
and alive, and too happy to go back to them
after all the good times when to see them again would’ve been
just a mere burden
after all that
when we now hold them again
now in this moment that we need them
we give them life
and that is the greatest gift we can give them.
