unpaid loans

you still have
the wooden box that you kept
your paper route
money in when you were a kid,
fifty years ago.
in ink
you've written all the loans
that you made to your family.
your mother still owes
you forty dollars,
your brother ten,
your sister fifteen.
no one has paid you back
and probably never will.
but you don't hold it
against them
despite opening the box
every now and then
and seeing your child
like hand writing
engrained forever
in the wood.