Closet cleaning

I was in the middle of a paper
and my mother was two arms into my closet-
pulling out old dresses
my First Communion white, a terribly small pink dress
that I "have to keep forever" because when I was two days old
that's what I wore home. 

And I wonder about those days, of undeniable importance to her
but what about that day I decided I would write poems? 
I was wearing uniform kakis, where are they? 
Or even that first poem-book? 
Where are the tennis shoes I ran my first mile in,
or the ruined stockings from my first violin recital,
or the jeans from the day I finished
that long Tolstoy biography
by the light of
my bedside
lamp? 

It reflected in the window, I remember
because the photons shot straight into my eyeballs
and registered electrically
somewhere deep in my brain. 

I keep that.  I keep those.  And the things to keep
piles up in my mother's arms. 
Truth be told, I want to tell her,
it doesn't matter what you designate to be kept
or even which electric charges
happen to scar onto me. 

That's not exactly
what Tolstoy's biographer
wanted to hear
either.


-Citron