disclaimer: This poem is not about me.
It was the winter she returned to the yellow sidewalk
where she had once carved her name in permanent pink chalk
next to a yard of roses that had bloomed in the summertime.
But this time her boots only found weeds and broken twigs,
just the letter E seemed to survive the rain.
And its vibrancy faded into a now delicate visibility,
unrecognizable.
It was the winter she returned to my drawers in my mother’s home.
She breathed in the vintage perfume,
let her bruised hands slide down her once favorite dress.
The scent of someone she used to know lingered in that room,
nostalgic, like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle.
She let her fingers innately run across off tuned piano keys,
as they emitted a familiar rhythm,
a reminding vibration that matched her own pulse.
But she is too captivated by her hands,
how they can play with such perfection
even when she cannot recognize these notes.
Sometimes small glimpses of the past return,
quietly, ghosts reincarnated into shadows,
the gun, the war,
The last rose,
blossoming in the center of his shirt,
But that was a different life, that was a different life.
