Memory.

She placed them neatly on the shelf,
and packed them full in suitcases,
she lined them across the mantle,
and stuffed the rest into plastic bags,
that were pushed to the back of the closet.
On the wall a broken clock hung ticking,
the faded tip of the Eiffel tower still clear,
on the paper behind the cheap plastic hands.
Her sister had given it to her at her wedding,
but she didn't talk to her sister anymore,
not since that incident at Christmas,
and the anger it had brought out of the store.
On the dining table the candelabrum stood,
beside the single faded place setting,
she didn't know the friend who gave it to her,
well, not anymore — many years had passed
since she had seen that smiling face last.
Beside her bed stood an old glass lamp,
the glass stained with time and specks of blue,
it wasn't very beautiful anymore, but it worked,
unlike her love from the man who gave it to her,
he had long ago gone away at her insistence,
because his pockets weren't lined with gold,
and that had always been her resistance.
Beside the refrigerator stood an umbrella stand,
it never rained where she lived but there it was,
a mindless purchase she had once made,
while her husband spent the evening at work,
and where the stores were always open,
her husband later found another place to go,
another woman to him just another new show.
On her closet hung one of many pictures,
of her daughter wearing a cap and gown,
and her beside her with a joyful frown,
her daughter now lived in a land far away,
only a few months could she come to stay.
She sat on the bed that was made each day
by the lady in a while coat who brought the pills,
Propped up against the bright yellow cushions,
there she lay from cold January to December,
surrounded by momentos of a life she could no longer remember.