I was looking for a key

I was looking for a key.

Instead I found the cables first—

three of them, a tangled sea

of ports that fit nothing, dispersed

beneath a box of tacks, a pen

with no cap, a battery

I can't place. And then

the envelope—flat, a little free

of the pile, bent at one corner,

the stamp still on. Your handwriting.

I knew it before

I opened it. The lighting

was just the one overhead,

the drawer still out.

Two winters. You said

happy birthday without

any knowledge of what was coming.

The cursive was fine. Unhurried.

I stood there, the drawer still humming

open, all of it buried

and findable at once.

I never found the key.