How to Harvest a Memory

Start where the field opens.

The soil carries last summer’s heat

even though the light has thinned.

You stand there long enough

to remember why you came.

***

Some memories rise easily.

You touch them and they stay whole.

A laugh drifting from another room.

A kitchen floor warm beneath bare feet.

Your child holding out a drawing

as if it were a kind of offering.

Those are simple to gather.

They settle into your hands

without asking for anything.

***

Others take work.

They sit low in the grass

and wait for you to find them.

A night you thought you’d forget.

A voice you still miss.

A small kindness you did not deserve.

You lift them slowly

as if the past might startle

and run from you.

***

There are memories that carry weight.

They were formed during the days

when you were learning how to survive.

Their skin feels uneven.

Their shape is strange.

Yet they belong with the rest.

You keep them because they marked you,

because they changed the way you walk,

because they stayed even when you asked them to leave.

***

Soon your arms are full.

What you carry is mixed and honest.

Light beside shadow.

Sweet beside weathered.

You breathe in the scent of it all,

the way the earth holds every season at once.

***

When the wind shifts,

you turn toward home.

You do not rush.

The basket presses against your ribs

as if it listens to your heartbeat.

What you gathered follows you

with quiet loyalty.

***

Some things come back.

Some things don’t leave.

You learn the difference slowly.