Behind the Manual

I yanked the manual out today,

the car was making a funny sound, anyway.

And then a little avalanche,

a dusty, forgotten trance

of things. A handful of nickels,

some dimes, a few sticky pickles

from an old road trip, no,

just a wrapper. And a pen, no flow

left in its dried-up blue.

A gas station receipt, faded through

from some state I drove right past,

a history that moved too fast.

It's a graveyard of tiny trips,

of plans that slipped

through fingers, or just got left,

a small, contained theft

of memory. Each crinkled thing,

a moment, meant to bring

some future clarity,

now just a quiet parity

of junk, a silent hoard.

Everything that's been ignored.