What Settles

I popped open the glove compartment and dust

rose up like I'd disturbed something that wanted

to stay buried.

Seven parking tickets from 2019, all paid.

A pen from a dentist office I haven't visited since 2018.

A phone number written on a receipt in handwriting

I don't recognize: Marcus, and an area code

from somewhere I used to live, maybe.

Or somewhere I never went.

Everything coated in a layer of dust that felt like time itself—

like if I left it long enough, I could measure

how long I've been this way, this negligent,

this unable to clean out a compartment.

I picked up the pen. The clip was broken.

The ink was probably dry. I set it back down

in the exact same spot, like if I didn't move it,

nobody would know I'd been snooping

in my own car, looking for evidence

of who I was supposed to be.

The receipt with Marcus's number crumbled

when I touched it. The digits were fading anyway.

I didn't save the number. I didn't throw it out.

I left it there in the dust, a bookmark

in a story I don't remember reading.

The tickets were worse—seven notices

of times I'd parked wrong, paid the fine,

moved on. Kept the proof. Like I needed

documentation of my failures, small and

municipal, organized in a plastic drawer.

I closed it without cleaning anything.

The dust settled back down. The pen,

the tickets, the name of a man I don't recall—

all of it waiting for the next time I get bored

in a service bay, waiting to remind me

that I keep things I don't need and lose

the things I do.