Let go

Keep
by Tania De Rozario


I keep everything: love letters
from adolescence, promises made
on drunken nights out, my mouth
shut against the wind as it tears

through everyone else's homes. I
press everything: flowers onto paper,
the world for answers, the delete button
on colons insisting, arrogant pauses

amidst my pretentious poems. I
preserve memories in bottles
filled with vinegar, reserve the right
to bear grudges that carbon print

my heart with four letter words. I
keep cards from childhood friends
I no longer meet, time to footsteps
walking away from me, my word,

but only if it's worth my time. I
recite with ease lyrics from songs
that meant something to me.
a decade ago, dialogue gracing

films we fell asleep to together. I
master taxidermy, immortalise text
from books reread, conversations
only I remember, stories you wrote
but never dared show anyone but me. I
reproduce life into photos, torture photos
into paintings, hang paintings on walls
that sigh, milk every sharp sadness

into something that can be sold. I
get tattooed watching lovers leave, or
when something from a book cannot be
let go, and must be needled into the skin the same way

it is needled like voodoo into the heart. I
keep everything, every moment of skin
on skin, of words falling from angry mouths
too fast, each sharp-toothed syllable

feeding on those that came before. I
am the calendar of my days. and I
am the collector of my histories, and I
am tired, so very tired, but I keep

everything so broke, so intact.