Kept For No Reason

I found it in the junk drawer looking for a pen—

an old clothespin, wooden, spring-loaded,

the paint worn away to bare wood on one edge.

I held it like I was trying to remember

what it was for, or why I'd kept it,

or when I'd last seen one of these outside

of a museum or a thrift store window.

Nobody hangs laundry anymore. Not in the city.

Not in apartments. Not in lives like this.

But there it was, taking up space

with the dead batteries, the broken rubber bands,

the takeout menus from restaurants that closed

five years ago.

I tried to remember where it came from.

My mother's house, maybe. Something she gave me

and I never bothered to ask why.

A relic from her childhood, or her mother's.

The spring still works. I can feel it

in the mechanism, still responsive,

still ready to clamp down on something.

I put it back in the drawer.

I didn't throw it away.

I don't know why. There's no line to hang.

There's no reason to keep it.

But something about the weight of it,

the fact that it still works,

the idea that somewhere there are people

who still use these things,

made me push it back between the old phone chargers

and the mystery keys that don't open anything.

It's the same reason I keep the other things—

the good Tupperware without a lid,

the coffee maker I don't use,

the recipe card my grandmother wrote in handwriting

I can barely read anymore.

Keeping things is how you don't have to decide

that they're really gone.