Mirror Memory

Just now, I learned

That the same calcium nitrate

Used to silver everyday mirrors

Is also the same used

In modern camera film

What if, in time

We learned how to gently peel off from our mirrors

These thin films of overlaid memories?

What a thrill then

To go hunting everywhere

In attics, at yard sales, through old fun houses

To find especially ancient, ownerless mirrors

Each one a precious archeological digsite

Of near-lost memories

To be carefully lifted and studied

Ghostly snapshots

Of our unselfconscious selves

Or instead

Maybe first, I would break into my old apartment

Rip the vanity mirror off the bathroom wall

And run with it

Safe under my arm

Keeping secret forever

The embedded, glazed memory

Of my rehearsing, "I love you"