Dust and the Brown Rug

I used to clean your rooms.  I filled trash bags full of discarded shoe boxes and organized papers. I read cards and letters sent to you and marveled at your lives apart from mine. It was a way of being close in your absence. Cleaning eased the isolation and anxiety living in the bottom of a floodplain with nowhere to go. It required hours. I liked to imagine cities safe for children, where anyone could walk without fear of abduction. Now I imagine things I never saw you do. I wonder if you remember looking for displaced things. I wonder if you remember returning to order.