Twenty years

Whenever I see her
picture, or hear a friend
describe what she
is up to now, I can
still feel her holding me.

Whenever I see her
name in print, or I smell
the sweet perfume she wore
for me that spring, the lust
I felt still shakes my core.

Whenever I see her
in a dream I know that
my heart’s still open to
her summons, and she can
crawl inside me where- or

whenever. I see her
breath on my window, I
taste her salt. I left, yet
still after twenty years
these dry bones won’t forget.

Trinkets

(a kyrielle)

A shadow hidden at the back
of her dresser drawer caught my eye
the day the movers came. I thought:
we keep things though we don’t know why.

A hundred foreign coins, a stack
of travel documents signed by
some long-dead border guard who fought
to keep things though we don’t know why,

a broken pocket watch, a black-
and-white shot of a compound high
in India, crammed in a box
to keep things though we don’t know why.

Tracing the alligator track
around this lid, I think of my
own collections, what I just bought
to keep things though we don’t know why.

Time stands still in keepsakes. We track
our past with trinkets that defy
every explanation sought.
We keep things though we don’t know why.