What for

Oh that rusty key.
Everyone asks. You asked. ‘For my old diary,’ I said -
No, not for me

to read ever again. Or it was for Dad’s car, maybe,
out on the beach - a long dead
shell, and here its rusty key

threaded in memory
on the bare wire fence, reddened
by time, and not for me

to use. No need to drive - there’s nowhere to be.
Roads and lives truncated
on this rusty key.

Sepia light spilling into the swallowing sea.
No, let’s not stay. I am tempted,
but this is not for me.

Not this forgotten game of hot-wire, still buzzing from last century.
The sputtered jokes of our pasts: you and me and our dead
hang too. It unlocks a lot, this rusty key,
But not the things I hoped to find. Not you; not me.