It’s in the words I don’t say

By Zach Unsell

I don’t know why I kept the 100 cranes you folded for me.
For over a decade they migrated with me in that red and blue Converse shoe box.
There, occupying a shelf space in every closet of my memories.

Every so often, when searching for something else, it seems,
I’d come across the box and decide to remove the lid. I’d see all the cranes neatly crafted,
Brightly colored, flower patterned, all jumbled together, on top of each other, waiting.

Only recently had I considered that these cranes may’ve actually been
the ones that used to fly above you, on strings in your room,
in perpetual migration toward the warm Spanish hues of your childhood walls.

In my last move, or in my divorce move, I forget which,
I finally gave them freedom from yet another darkened room. I don’t want to tell you where.
I don’t want to know or remember. I image someplace warm, scattered V’s across a blue horizon.

Sometimes, though, in the moments when I forget my actions, I go searching;
And, it’s in the moments that I come closer
to realizing why I kept the 100 cranes you folded for me.