The keys outlive their doors
Shapes without teeth
Without kingdoms
They gather like orphaned spells
Still warm from pockets
That dissolved in the wash

I shake them just to hear
The ghosts of latches
A sound like cities exhaling
What good is a key
That remembers the lock
Better than the hand that turned it

Some were cut for hands
That no longer cast marks
We keep them anyway
Not for opening
But for the weight
Of what almost fitted