Scuffing through the kitchen, I stopped to right a slanted card,
slipping, as it was, under gravity and magnet.
I pulled its corner to a wrinkle-black space, an open patch
among the rest, the red and green and gold
and seasoned blend of photograph-news: a baby
curling into its breath, scraps of gilded glass, a vacancy
on the stair-step where a mother once stood
beside a couch-full of pajamaed children smiling.
I was once a child smiling.
Once a pajamaed child among a throng of children,
my voice rose and fell like theirs, like the wings of sparrows
tapping and prodding the pale-pink sky
to wake, to rise.
My stair-step now is vacant too.
Not one but many lost to time and discord
and a waning sun, which may yet burn behind the earth
but I don’t see it, so busy am I tucking meaning into
the folds of my hands, the corners of my eyes, the soles
of my faded leather boots.
Aspiring author, poet, literary artist
