saving

I've been saving my entire life.

I've saved movie stubs, grocery lists, concert posters, airport parking tickets from significant reunions. I've saved boxes of notes passed on blurred pre-summer afternoons, half-hearted sketches, sole-less shoes & yellow-flowered skirts from my girlhood. I wanted a hobby so I saved stamps, saved candy wrappers, saved glass bottles, saved feathers, saved white stones plucked by the ocean. Because of its tangibility, I used to consider saving tears in a jar without considering their purpose, only their cause. I thought of saving brittle love letters tied in ribbons - the way they showed with silver-haired ladies in movies. They were always smiling so I thought that would be a nice thing to have, later on.

Sometime ago, I discovered I couldn't really save the important things. So I began saving words. I kept them in a bowl with water and all the bitter-pennies-dried-flowers I had accumulated throughout the years. I saved words written in darkness when my father had shut the lights at bedtime (words him and my mother would later take to their bedroom to read), words that were supposed to become novels, words that made pressed dragonflies fold their wings in shame.

I stole and saved, I cried and saved, I lost and saved. Someone would die, and I would save. I'm not certain if it helps, but that's the problem with words - I don't know how to finish the sentence. I never have. So I'll keep on saving until the drawers and basement fill with bowls of copper water. When I run out of space, I'll wash my hands and start again.