I put my slippers on
and find a family of plastic people
living inside them
like refugees smuggled
by ship
our house is stuffed
with these kinds
of surprises
the necklace I thought I lost
poking like a snake’s head
out of my filing cabinet
the calculator
in the cutlery drawer
and all of our spoons
in the bookshelf
the village you built this morning while I slept
tents made with the baby’s diapers
post-it notes for a yellow brick road
all of it so careful
I can picture your face
as you assemble these nests
serious and lost
in the tiny world
you are sewing inside of our own
I am going to make
an extra set of keys today
a gift to all of us
for some future day
when I will ask you
did you do something with mama’s keys
and you really won’t remember
only some vague notion
that they weren’t keys at all
but dinosaur bones
or a volcano
some critical piece
of a story
that soared and now
is gone.