Pocket Lint
Sophie Nock
The relics of life accumulate like pocket lint:
piled letters on a hall table, coins in foreign currencies,
tangled keys for a hundred drawers.
Old theatre tickets lying faded in empty purses,
and receipts from first-date meals, pressed into albums.
Spare buttons for a wardrobe full of dresses;
pencils scattered on an unmanned desk.
Inscribed books are the worst:
“Sent in the hope that from it
you may derive unbounded pleasure” –
these are all the remaining words
of a person we may never know.
The dust and scraps of a life well-lived
are valuable yet worthless:
Precious to one person, after death
they are packed into boxes or crumpled in bins.
Then, they were everything, these relics.
Now, they mean nothing.