La Dispute - Objects in Space lyrics

Yesterday alone I laid everything
Out on the carpet books, kitchen things
Objects with specific purpose or none
Arranged them sideways in a grid
On the floor there unmoored
Out of context and then considered it
First the whole picture
Then everything individually
Humming along at the deadest pace imaginable
One object then another and then the next
And I wondered what they meant there
If they meant anything still

Found notes camping supplies
A book you bought in the desert
"Identifying Wildflowers"
Pictures from vacations from parties
Kit'schy gifts we bought from rest stops
On that road trip out West objects
Everything it'self and then memory
All of it laid out there
From the dining room the living room
The hallway and the basement and the kitchen
From that room we called the office
But never used even the bathroom
Everything laid out there on the floor
On the carpet out of context

And I sat there for hours

Today I moved everything from the floor to
The table in the dining room
Placed each thing carefully without
Reason or at least
Without one I understood or could describe
There on the table together and
When I was done
And stepped back I realized what I had made
Keepsakes pictures
Letters ordinary objects all collected there

A memorial

And I thought of ones on
Highways or set by gravestones
All the things you see
There but don’t understand
But still bring a remembered
Thing back vividly
Invoke someone’s reality when there
Together in that
Place in that way out of context
And I knew I had to take
It down before anybody else saw
Tomorrow I plan to put them all somewhere
Those things in boxes
Side of the road attic maybe
All these things that push and
Pull me through history
To places I once was, places I might’ve gone
Places I ended up going postcards
Ticket stubs from one thing or another
A personalized coffee mug neither
Your name nor mine
Phone cards and old phones
A page from an old calendar I bought once
At a thrift store and insisted on hanging
That cycles of the moon print photos
Old boots of mine

Put them in boxes

And I sat there for hours
In the living room first
Then in the dining room moving things around
Picking things up and seeing
Where they took me to what place in history
What moment on our timeline
Where we were, where I was
Where I thought we’d end up
In this house or on the highway
Driving somewhere near Christmas
In the desert or anywhere else
And I put them in boxes