This poem SO struck my mind as I purge and clean THINGS I THOUGHT I NEEDED-WANTED. But now they own me, take time for maintenance, take space in my life, OVERWHELM. Let me become simple and uncluttered. Kind of scary those forgotten dreams remember us.

What We Want
by Linda Pastan

What we want

is never simple.


We move among the things


we thought we wanted:


a face, a room, an open book


and these things bear our names


—now they want us.


But what we want appears


in dreams, wearing disguises.


We fall past,


holding out our arms


and in the morning


our arms ache.


We don't remember the dream,


but the dream remembers us.


It is there all day


as an animal is there


under the table,


as the stars are there.