Some things return only when the world gets quiet. Written in the spirit of Contemplation, a solo piano piece, this poem explores memory, the lives we leave behind, and the quiet possibility of learning to let the present moment be enough.

Listen to the piece as you read, and let the music take you through the spaces between the words.

There are things I only remember
when nothing is asking me to remember them.

A house I lived in years ago.
The particular shade of evening
that used to fall across the carpet.
Someone calling my name
from another room
before I knew there would be a day
when nobody would.

I think we spend our lives
mistaking the temporary for the permanent
and the permanent for something
we can afford to ignore.

We leave the light on
in rooms we no longer enter.
Keep the number of someone
who will never call.
We learn the shape of an absence
so well
that eventually we stop recognizing it
as an absence at all.

It becomes the furniture.

It becomes the way we sleep
on one side of the bed.
The way we drive past an old address
without turning our heads.
The way a song comes on
in the middle of an ordinary afternoon
and for three minutes
we are twenty years old again,
standing in a kitchen
where everyone is still alive.

And then the song ends.

The refrigerator starts humming.
A car passes outside.
Somebody’s dog is barking
at something that doesn’t matter.

The world is so terribly good
at continuing.

I used to think that healing
would feel like leaving something behind.
A door closing.
A long road disappearing
in the rearview mirror.

But lately I think
it might be something smaller.

Perhaps it is learning
that a memory can enter the room
without being given the house.

That I can miss the person I was
without asking him to come back.
That there are versions of my life
I will never get to live,
and I can be sorry about that
without making the rest of my life
a punishment.

I don’t know if this is peace.

I still wake up some mornings
already tired of being myself.
Still find old arguments
waiting for me in the shower.
Still rehearse conversations
with people who have forgotten
there was ever anything to settle.

But sometimes,
for a moment,
I sit beside the window
and let the afternoon happen.

No accounting.
No apology.
No attempt to turn the hours
into something I deserve.

Just the light changing
on the opposite wall.

Just the small, unremarkable fact
that I am here to see it.

And for once
I don’t ask the moment
to promise me anything.

I let it pass through me
the way music does—

beautiful,
unrepeatable,
and already on its way
to becoming something
I will remember.

— Matthew P. Haubert