Teach Me a Lesson

There's a beach ball stuck in the rafters of the pool, It's been there for the 7 years I've been coming here, It contains air from the lungs of an unknown person, An essence that rests here though they left and likely never considered the fact, I wonder all the places, There, I've left pieces of me, I've caught sight of the unknown, Known but not seen, Recalled gently where my presence never left a place but I never returned, Sometimes I encounter it with a long lost friend who has a memory or an item I made, a saying or dance I embodied that they kept somehow, There are some people I'd like to ask – who I was in that moment of my life when we passed, I hope those fragments are more than the air I breathed on an unremembered day, And the reason people smile and hold an item in their hands to conjure back as I do on occasions, Small links of the unforgotten piece me together as someone who existed. August 11, 2023.