white walls

I peel the evidence of who I've been from my childhood bedroom walls: pictures / postcards / assorted debris drawn from different corners of a map I only trace in memory. the paths are blurry in the dust of time since they were made. the walls are white and all but bare if not for chips from fossils of saudade unwilling to let go. but the room feels bigger now. clearer and cleaner and nearly ready to forget. I pile the sacred with the scraps and remember I change shape / change tune / hurt less and grow with time. tides take and matters of the heart change colour in the stream / the sun / with every passing nightmare. this will hurt until it doesn't and the time it takes won't matter more than you or how it felt. when it doesn't something else will. no matter who remembers you will matter anyway.