The Keeper of Lost Things
In the heart of a cobbled, forgotten lane,
Where the world’s lost whispers softly remain,
Stood a quaint little shop with a weathered old sign,
Its letters half-faded, its wood wrapped in vine.
“The Keeper of Lost Things” it read,
Where echoes of past lives silently bled.
No bells at the door, no glow of warm light,
Yet it pulled at the soul like a dream in the night.
The air smelled of cedar and rain-soaked dust,
Of stories long buried in cobweb and rust.
Glass jars lined the shelves, each labeled with care —
"Button from 1963" or "A single gold hair."
A porcelain doll with one hollowed-out eye,
A crumpled love letter with words that won’t die,
A compass that spins with no true north,
An old man’s watch that has long since run forth.
Each object hummed with a life of its own,
Threads of the broken, the lost, the unknown.
The Keeper, an old man with eyes made of storm,
Wore a coat stitched from autumns long-worn.
His hands moved slow as he dusted each thing,
Fingers like music on an old violin string.
He whispered their stories like prayers in the dark,
As though every trinket still bore its own spark.
"This ribbon was tied in a girl’s braided hair,
She lost it the day she stopped being aware
That childhood ends not with tears, but with time
When lullabies cease to have reason or rhyme."
"This key unlocked a blue diary once,
Where a boy wrote his secrets in late summer hunts.
He buried it deep ‘neath a yew tree’s old spine,
But life had a way of forgetting the sign."
The Keeper knew them — each loss, every part.
He felt every ache as it entered his heart.
Yet none did he claim, nor did he return,
For letting go, he believed, was a lesson to learn.
But one day, a girl wandered in from the rain,
Eyes wide with wonder, her heart full of pain.
She clutched a red scarf that she’d held far too long,
Its threads pulled and tangled like notes from a song.
"You keep the lost things?" she asked with a frown.
Her eyes met his gaze like a soul looking down.
"My mother’s been gone, and I can’t seem to part
With this scarf that still smells like her wild, beating heart."
The Keeper just smiled, and his eyes turned to grey.
"To lose is to live, child — it’s the price that we pay.
But every lost thing still remembers its name,
Just as the fire still remembers the flame."
He took the red scarf with the gentlest of hands,
Like cradling a map to a faraway land.
He folded it softly, no crease, not a tear,
Then placed it beside a lone ivory hair.
"What do I do now?" she asked in the glow,
Her voice like a candle too weak to still show.
"Do I fill up the empty with something brand new?
Or wait for the day it comes back into view?"
The Keeper looked on with a tender regret,
His wrinkles like stories that time won’t forget.
"To hold on too tightly is never the way,
For the weight of what’s gone makes the present decay.
The hollow you feel is a sign you were whole,
For loss only finds those who carry a soul."
So she left, her heart no less torn,
But lighter somehow, like the edge of the morn.
She walked down the path, her hands free and wide,
Her grief still her own, but with nothing to hide.
Back in the shop, where the sun never stays,
The Keeper arranged the lost things in new ways.
He placed the red scarf near a compass of brass —
Both symbols of journeys, of time yet to pass.
Somewhere far off, a yew tree now sways.
The boy’s old diary decays in its maze.
But its stories? They wander, like ribbons in air —
For nothing that’s lost is forgotten out there.
Where the world’s lost whispers softly remain,
Stood a quaint little shop with a weathered old sign,
Its letters half-faded, its wood wrapped in vine.
“The Keeper of Lost Things” it read,
Where echoes of past lives silently bled.
No bells at the door, no glow of warm light,
Yet it pulled at the soul like a dream in the night.
The air smelled of cedar and rain-soaked dust,
Of stories long buried in cobweb and rust.
Glass jars lined the shelves, each labeled with care —
"Button from 1963" or "A single gold hair."
A porcelain doll with one hollowed-out eye,
A crumpled love letter with words that won’t die,
A compass that spins with no true north,
An old man’s watch that has long since run forth.
Each object hummed with a life of its own,
Threads of the broken, the lost, the unknown.
The Keeper, an old man with eyes made of storm,
Wore a coat stitched from autumns long-worn.
His hands moved slow as he dusted each thing,
Fingers like music on an old violin string.
He whispered their stories like prayers in the dark,
As though every trinket still bore its own spark.
"This ribbon was tied in a girl’s braided hair,
She lost it the day she stopped being aware
That childhood ends not with tears, but with time
When lullabies cease to have reason or rhyme."
"This key unlocked a blue diary once,
Where a boy wrote his secrets in late summer hunts.
He buried it deep ‘neath a yew tree’s old spine,
But life had a way of forgetting the sign."
The Keeper knew them — each loss, every part.
He felt every ache as it entered his heart.
Yet none did he claim, nor did he return,
For letting go, he believed, was a lesson to learn.
But one day, a girl wandered in from the rain,
Eyes wide with wonder, her heart full of pain.
She clutched a red scarf that she’d held far too long,
Its threads pulled and tangled like notes from a song.
"You keep the lost things?" she asked with a frown.
Her eyes met his gaze like a soul looking down.
"My mother’s been gone, and I can’t seem to part
With this scarf that still smells like her wild, beating heart."
The Keeper just smiled, and his eyes turned to grey.
"To lose is to live, child — it’s the price that we pay.
But every lost thing still remembers its name,
Just as the fire still remembers the flame."
He took the red scarf with the gentlest of hands,
Like cradling a map to a faraway land.
He folded it softly, no crease, not a tear,
Then placed it beside a lone ivory hair.
"What do I do now?" she asked in the glow,
Her voice like a candle too weak to still show.
"Do I fill up the empty with something brand new?
Or wait for the day it comes back into view?"
The Keeper looked on with a tender regret,
His wrinkles like stories that time won’t forget.
"To hold on too tightly is never the way,
For the weight of what’s gone makes the present decay.
The hollow you feel is a sign you were whole,
For loss only finds those who carry a soul."
So she left, her heart no less torn,
But lighter somehow, like the edge of the morn.
She walked down the path, her hands free and wide,
Her grief still her own, but with nothing to hide.
Back in the shop, where the sun never stays,
The Keeper arranged the lost things in new ways.
He placed the red scarf near a compass of brass —
Both symbols of journeys, of time yet to pass.
Somewhere far off, a yew tree now sways.
The boy’s old diary decays in its maze.
But its stories? They wander, like ribbons in air —
For nothing that’s lost is forgotten out there.
- Khushi Kaul
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