We are held together by memory,
each of us raveled tightly
around recollection
as if it were a certainty,
each telling our heart that
this past is the one.
We are great storytellers,
and rapt listeners.
But we are prisoners, too.
The histories we tell ourselves
about who we are
and why we are:
these are wax and twine.
We are stuck and bound.
Afraid.
Scared of the courage
it takes to set the past aside.
Fearful of a letting go
that might unwind us from ourselves.
But we are more than memory.
More than we recall.
Our long-told then
is just an echo of the now
and a shadow of the soon,
It is neither who we are,
nor who we must become.
It is merely who we always said we were.
And if we can undo the twine
and melt the wax,
we might just find ourselves anew,
clean-woven from fresh yesterdays.
Then, binding up up old wounds
with the cloth of new remembering,
we can break bread with all those selves
we never could recall before:
the dusty splinters of our soul
that were neglected
and so long held apart by memory.
