Amnesia

You find yourself in a second-hand storerummaging among the shirtsof past lives for one that fits you,that's missing the button you've carriedin your pocket for years, a worry bead

you worry with your nagging sensethat everywhere you go, you see yourselfin others who seem, like you, to have losttheir ability to remember.

Just yesterday you stopped someonewho looked vaguely familiarand told him how you feltyour life was dangling halfwaybetween a past that keeps disappearing

and a present in which each step leadsonly to another déjà-vu.

What did he say? Did you tell himabout that feeling you sometimes haveof there being some higher purposeto your residing here?

Now you wander among buildingswhere people sit in the windows and smoke,disowned and withdrawn.You'll go among these streets,arriving first at a long-closed bridge

under endless repair (which you believeyou crossed once, many years ago,though you can't remember whatwas on the other side),

and then ending up, as you always do,at that row of pawnshops,each window one you've looked into many times,studying it as if there was somethinginside you can't remember, but need to reclaim.