Holding On

What pleasure do I get
from that thousand dollar jacket
I last hugged from the inside
a dozen years ago?
It hangs, spiritless
inside my closet like
a prison suicide
waiting to be discovered
by the indifferent
morning shift.
Or those fancy leather shoes
tucked inside their
cardboard coffins,
buried under the weight of
all the imagined occasions,
hoping soon to be
ceremoniously exhumed.
Or consider this —
this lousy two dollar pen
picked up in a hurry
from the corner store,
its smooth rubber grip,
the deadly end fattened
with hungry black ink,
gliding across my page
like heroin.
Or this fractured
ceramic mug —
a stowaway
from a forgotten family
move, its smiling curved handle
fitting my hand
like I was there,
holding it wet
the very day it was shaped.
These are things that
cost me nothing 
yet here they are
showing up for me 
every single day
giving me something solid
to hold onto
tightly
as the gale force
cyclones of time
whip my body into
the future.