In his quiet town

On his uphill street

In his too-old house

Where the floorboard creak

When you take his crying stairs

To his yellow room

Overflowing with memories

That clutter the ocean view

Disorganized nostalgia

Piling up from the floor

He lets me borrow a few

Every so often I do

And learn parts of him I hadn’t before

But they don’t fit in my house

On a busy street

Young, and incomplete

Where floorboards don’t yet creak

His memories don’t keep

And so I visit them instead

Rocking my chair as he fills my head

Stories I’d never heard until then

And when he shares, his room unearths

Until the ocean view returns

And as he ascends

The floorboards sing

Choirs of creaking

That lift him like wings

Through his too-old house

On his uphill street

In his quiet town

Where the memories keep

But now a path has cleared

To the window view

And he watches the rippling waves

Until he’s a memory too