In these times of lockdown, I have gone out only once in 42 days, so I thought I would finally clean out my purse! A daunting task for someone like me…

Things I Found in My Purse

a covid-19 poem by lauren hallstrom

 

approximately thirty-eight

bobby pins,

crumbs from the time I stuffed a

doughnut wrapped in a napkin inside to

eat later. you never know what you will

find here. I am

giving, I think,

Hermione’s bag a run for its money.

if I look hard enough, the broken

jewelry will turn into anchors in a sloshing sea, or

keys to a kingdom of

lost things. here are my

movie tickets to Little Women,

nestled beside an

old business card from that literary agent I never got back to…

perhaps I should

question my method of keeping memories. I

remember the

shredded book pages from

the last literary craft project, my

university ID photo with the awkward hair. moments I

value somehow circle back to here,

where they stay put. then fade into

Xerox copies I carry of every

yesterday I sought to contain, in this

zone of losing, then slowly regaining.