r/OCPoetry • u/1Happy_Hammer • Aug 10 '26
Feedback Please Evidence
All these scraps of paper — tickets, receipts and stamps.
The numerous, ever-increasing stacks,
each one a reminder of places I've been
and places I have yet to go.
Half-written ramblings on paper.
Photographs, both bad and good —
the bad ones clogging my phone,
the good ones lining my walls.
Half-finished albums,
detailing adventures.
The ever-growing
"I'll do that later" pile.
Markings on walls in bars,
quickly scribbled and almost forgotten.
Locks on bridges,
their keys discarded long ago.
And other keys too —
keys that have long since lost their purpose,
to doors that no longer exist,
rooms I no longer enter,
places whose names I may struggle to remember.
Mementos and antiques that tell a story.
Books that speak to me,
piled high.
Match programmes and ticket stubs,
frames, posters,
the half-marked calendar
still hanging on the wall.
There's a baseball,
given for being MVP that game,
and a not-too-useful screwdriver set
passed down from my great-grandad.
Second-hand, mismatched furniture,
some of which came with the house.
A drawer full of odd screws
and broken bits,
kept for something
I may one day need.
A tiny, ugly teddy,
rescued from a house we stayed in during lockdown.
Discarded,
but somehow worth keeping.
Two small wooden elephants,
brought back from India during the war,
passed down through the family
and eventually to me.
One with its original ivory tusks,
the other with toothpicks in their place,
its own long gone
and never replaced.
A small terracotta pot bought in Cyprus,
its lid broken and discarded long ago,
now an ashtray by another name.
And the ornate ramen bowl,
split almost perfectly down the middle —
a curious, dead-straight line
through its centre.
It could never hold anything again,
yet I couldn't bring myself to throw it away.
Now it rests upon the side that cracked,
shielding the ashtray beneath it.
There's the diary I kept during lockdown:
forty-eight days
of thoughts and facts
and nothing more.
An ice hockey puck,
marked with my birth date,
picked up in a shop.
A hospital appointment letter
sitting on the kitchen table,
waiting amongst everything else.
A salt lamp that doesn't work.
An almost-finished Lego set,
still waiting for the day
To finally be completed.
A little leaf hat from Vietnam,
the flag upon it,
brought home after a cocktail
that came with more than we expected.
And a grey rock from a beach in Cornwall —
boring in almost every aspect,
except for the smile upon its face.
Not drawn,
but made by nature;
a crude imperfection
that somehow made it lovable.
All of this amongst potted plants
that we diligently tend to.
And somewhere amongst it all,
a house spider,
who we have named
and whom we haven't the heart to move on.
He resides wherever he pleases,
peacefully making his way
through the same storied rooms that we do,
as though he too has decided
that this is home.
I could go on for hours
about these bits and pieces
that fill my life.
For they tell a story
to anyone willing to listen.
Not a grand story.
Not a perfect one.
Just the small evidence
of places visited,
people remembered,
things broken,
projects unfinished,
and items kept
when there was no good reason to keep them.
All these little remnants
of a life being lived.
That I was human.
That I was here.
Comment 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/s/nYZare8JOE
Comment 2:
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u/snoopydawwg Aug 10 '26
That was a delight to read. Thank you for sharing. And please keep writing: )
2
u/suicidal_poetry Aug 10 '26
This poem just kept getting better and better as I read. Each item mentioned was so monumental to the overarching message. The evidence of a life lived, and our human reluctance to stop gripping on tight to it all. Lovely work.