October 12, 2010

empty mind

It’s not just autumn barraging her with detail. Every road,
every meal, each pause to stretch her legs, the map reeling
with departures and arrivals, all the living rooms she strode
into after hours of highway: she’s trying to contain it all, feeling
as if the only way the trip will be remembered is if she can catalogue
everything – in words and photographs, in the anecdotes gathered daily.
She is making a museum of these memories, afraid to let a fog
drift over and erase the scene. Sometimes, she wants to clear the cache entirely,
start over with an empty mind, simply witness and move on.
But these stories are the breadcrumbs that will lead her home.