Shades

Barely able to hold my memories
I open the tin boxes
in my daughter's room.
Only traces of her old outlines
cling to the room since she's now 32
and wrestling dreams
a thousand miles away.

We added trash containers
and the cardboard shells of
proud acquisitions we haven't
given ourselves the time to discard.
We stacked her relics on top of
an unpainted wooden dresser we had
enameled green in 1975.

The hinged oblong tin box contains
entangled with its ribbon, a medal
made of bronze that says "Manitoba School
Science Symposium."

In the square tin box there are four pennies
a piece of cotton and
the rubbery plastic likeness of a unicorn.
She left a string of plastic faux pearls
that only a young girl would believe in,
a tiny bottle of Tempo toilet water.
There is a small square school photograph
taken when she was six and a badge
with the likeness of an angel.