Ninety Years in A Shoebox

Reflections on lives well-utilised.

Ninety years in a shoebox,
Her husbands
And daughters
Now canvas paintings
And authors;
Scrapbooks
Blank cover to cover
And covered in tear-drops,
Old diaries,
Pages missing,
Dog-eared and dying;
A pocket-watch
Dust-clogged and scratched
By the day-to-day,
The holidays
And last-minute decisions,
But faintly,
Harrowingly
Still ticking.
The amulets
The cardboard kisses,
The toasts she made
The shooting star wishes
Covered in DNA
And fingerprints;
Now withered, but meaning all the same
As the stock options
The policies,
The properties
That you, sir, shall take to the grave.