Asking the Right Questions

Where do the things go?

The things I’ve lost along the way?

The things I strewed out ahead of and behind me?

Things like shoes and pants

Chargers, pens

Books, headphones?

Are they still tucked under airplane seats?

Stuffed in corners of forgotten cabins?

Underneath the sink in the St. Peter’s Inn in downtown Portland?

Or have they found new homes?

Have they been picked up by the people who breezed through after me?

Have they been taken home or thrown in trashcans?

Have they been donated or reused?

Or do they still map out the places I’ve been?

Markers as to the path of who I am and where I’ve been?

Are they sitting like inanimate sentinels to the sacred places in my life?

The places that mark the journey I’ve made.

Will there someday come a time when a path will be laid between those objects

Lines drawn connecting the sweater I left on a plane when I was four

To the shoes I left under a hotel bed in Maine.

And what will that path spell out?

Will it say who I was or who I have become?

Will it speak of someone with useless objects

Or will it speak of someone too concerned with the bigger things in life

To remember the pair of pants shoved in the corner of the cabin?

I know where most of the things I’ve lost have gone.

Most forgotten on travels as I make my way at break neck speeds

But I want to know what they mean.

What will they mean?

What do all of the things I’ve lost and forgotten

 mean to who finds them

Or to who traces this path across the world and back.