Shoe Box

Busy little monkey mind at work
while I watch the dance of willow leaves
outside our window and remember
other bedrooms, the way I “recall”
past lives’ vague but plausible camouflage.
One year, beneath a crackle-printed comforter
I fret about the future; another day,
fanned out on a terry-cloth chaise, I pine
for the past, for the bristle-haired troll dolls
I kept in a shoebox when I was ten
and the lined index cards on which I wrote
unconnected nouns over and over,
each a skeleton key keyed only to itself,
unselfconscious as a series of selfies.