We will not have heirlooms.
We will not have the memory-laden tape players of our parents,
Nor the ornate tchotchkes of our grandparents,
Nor the hushed, fragile relics of those who came before.
We cannot afford ourselves the luxury of sentimentality.
We are, quite simply, not allowed.
Some things must be given.
Some things must be left.
Wherever they come to rest, it will not be with you,
For the back of your stolid little SUV
Leaves no room for accumulation.
The tattered orange armchair left by a disastrous ex-roommate will not fit,
No matter how deeply you rooted yourself in it,
Claimed it as your axis mundi.
It goes to the curb.
The spindly ti plant you disentangled from the prison of itself will not fit,
No matter how desperately you revived it,
Birthing fresh green leaves against all odds.
It goes to a stranger.
The trappings of a material life are, perhaps, less material for us.
We shuttle cacti, and comics, and clarinets,
Yet arrive somewhere new without so much as a chair to sit on.
Once, you dreamed wistfully of it,
Conversations about philosophy on the floor in the dead of night,
Sitting not upon furniture but the foundation of your intellect,
But the situation rather loses its charm
When it sells your bed out from under you.
Is it a product of our age, or our era?
Perhaps we will live like "real people" someday,
Renting Uhauls, collecting furniture,
Having heirlooms and memorabilia after all.
Or perhaps that life belongs to generations past
And we are fated to float but never take root,
The unluckiest seed of a dandelion whose wish never did come true,
Adrift on the aimless wind forever.