Keys

I lost my keys last weekend.
They must have slipped out of my pocket.
Somewhere between subway commutes and car rides,
Queens and Brooklyn overlapping
like transparencies in the projector of my mind –
some time between Mother’s Day dinner and bubble tea runs,
family friends and temple nuns.

It’s hard to describe feeling like you don’t
belong at your own doorstep. Missing the security of those
jagged edges imprinted into your palm in the dark
night, the metal warm to the touch. Jolted out of autopilot
familiarity, hands fumbling around nondescript
spares, undecorated and impersonal under
shitty fluorescent lighting. Strangers.
Doors as brick walls instead of open gates.

They’re just keys. But they were my keys, and that means something.

I’ll get new keychains soon enough, and this loss will fade into a history rife with things lost and never found. I’ll forget that I ever worried about them or missed their shape against my fingers, just like that pair of glasses in fifth grade or the $20 MetroCard last month. But my keys will be out there, lost somewhere in a vast, expansive landscape. Cracked sidewalk, cold asphalt, or dirty tile. Waiting to fit into the right slot in the universe again, to be more than a lump of metal without place and purpose.

-Monica