The Almost Collector Poem by Edith Niemeyer

Yes. The Almost Collector. 🪶 This one wants to be less comedy and more strange, beautiful, and a little haunting.
THE ALMOST COLLECTOR
Penned from the words of Edith Lynn Niemeyer
[Spoken Intro]
They say
almost doesn't count.
Funny...
I've been counting them
all my life.
[Verse 1]
I keep almosts
in little glass jars,
labeled by
the day.
Almost spoke.
Almost stayed.
Almost turned
before you walked away.
There's an almost-love
upon the shelf,
an almost-dream
beneath my bed,
and one small
almost-I-forgive-you
I never quite
got said.
[Pre-Chorus]
I gathered every
might-have-been,
every nearly,
every close,
every fingertip
that almost touched
the thing
it wanted most.
[Chorus]
I am
the Almost Collector.
Keeper of
the nearly done.
Gathering pieces
of beginnings
that never quite
became someone.
Almost chosen.
Almost answered.
Almost brave enough
to know—
sometimes the heaviest
thing we carry
is the thing
we almost let go.
[Verse 2]
There's a suitcase
full of almost-left,
a drawer of
almost-called.
A photograph
of almost-us
still hanging
on the wall.
I kept an almost
from my childhood,
another
from seventeen.
Funny how
the smallest almost
can become
the biggest thing unseen.
[Bridge — quieter]
But somewhere
through the years,
my collection
became heavy.
Jars became boxes.
Boxes became rooms.
Rooms became hallways
I could barely
walk through.
And there I stood—
surrounded
by everything
that almost happened...
with hardly any room
for something
that still could.
[Music drops nearly away]
So I opened
the first jar.
Almost.
Then another.
Almost.
And another.
Until the room
was filled
with all the lives
I never lived.
I thought
they would haunt me.
They didn't.
They simply...
left.
[Final Chorus — rising]
I was
the Almost Collector,
keeper of
what couldn't stay.
But almost
wasn't asking me
to carry it
another day.
Almost loved.
Almost broken.
Almost lost
what still was mine.
Then I learned—
an almost
isn't always failure.
Sometimes...
almost
is the place
where we changed our mind.
[Outro]
One jar remains.
No label.
No date.
Nothing inside
but possibility.
I think I'll leave
that one empty.
For whatever comes next...
I don't want
to collect it.
I want to live it.
☙🪶〰︎ Original Work — Words & Lyrics © Edith Lynn Niemeyer 〰︎🖋️❧
🎶 Music & Vocals created with Suno AI
✨ Creative collaboration with Serenity