PHOTO PROVIDED Joe Pacheco

What if all my moments are still there,

Embedded in some microprocessor,

Awaiting recovery and editing,

Waiting to be relived?

Which would I save or delete,

And which restore exact or alter most?

Would I revisit sites of loss and failure

Inserting in some a better might-have-been,

Limiting regret and pain at others,

Perhaps at two or three undoing all?

Or keep first times refreshed

And error free with bits of newness,

Surging still with great discovery

And micro-eternities of dreams fulfilled?

And would I through special search and sort

Create an album of epiphanies

Shared with friends and lovers kept and lost —

Each moment pasted fresh in glittering frame?

Or restore in full each second lived with you

And spool unending copies of our love

Till all of memory and space exhaust

And nothing else could save …

What if all my moments are still there,

Embedded in some microprocessor,

Awaiting recovery and editing,

Waiting to be relived?

Which would I save or delete,

And which restore exact or alter most?