The Literary Mirror

One steel trunk, unopened since the flood.
Two calendars, both wrong by a year.
A sewing machine that still remembers thread
though no one here remembers how to feed it.

The almirah keeps its own accounts:
a widow's silver, a son's old report card,
the smell of a mothball that has outlived
everyone it was bought to protect.

I am not here to grieve. I am here to count.
Grief can come later, in a smaller room,
once everything has a number
and nothing, anymore, has a name.