I have false memories of furniture and places
Hopeful attempts at meaningful bookkeeping
I have real ones as well, less vivid and less dear
Faded spines of books shelved in a sunny room

I have anachronistic rooms and homeless dates
Square pegs happily settled in their round abodes
Vivid recollections of unborn events
Mismatched situations, casts, and timelines

Stories lived in dreams tug at my heart, nostalgic
Houses I built at night, entire cities, neighbourhoods
calling me from within the deepest folds of my memory,
next to my childhood home, or the old city were I first loved

Side by side, the real and the imagined live like equals,
But there are records, witnesses, photographs
Quarters for the true life to hide and resist
While the dreamed army will turn to ashes when I perish