do not duplicate

I found them in an old cardboard box with torn edges. They hadn't changed even though I had so very much so. I remember them clearly now in my hand, the tarnished gold and silver on the bent wire circles - the plastic one that made the doors beep - one to enter, one to leave. I can't recall which doors they open now, which they did. I'm sure the locks have all been changed these days. There are small ones for cabinets and boxes, other security containers that are a little less secure now.

How long has it been?
Made in the U.S.A.
Haworth.
L001.
Lyon Aurora, Ill.
ESP Corp.
Do not duplicate.
Schlage. 5x75.
Chicago lock co.


I am blank. The box affords no less mystery now than it did the years before this, the sliced hours, the seconds pushing themselves against an inevitable collision of dust and shadows. Now I listen to doorbells and strangers walking through the day outside, the trees and grass drying in the heat, the gentle wind falling down like the voices of children kept too long in dark rooms and antechambers. It's not like that of course. People haven't any idea of it except to say the windows do not lie about the here and now of things, the stress of silence, the distance of searching for things that aren't there.

Here again looking back over the years and wondering what it has to do with anything to be here.