letters

opening the box, the letters you once wrote
drop out.
all that is left for me to remember
are the white gaps, now pale brown, in which
i make up your thoughts as i presume they were, but the edges
of the pages are darker, and crisp, and fall apart.

reading the past is drinking dust, choking
on every line that has gone, you
are most of all dead in your letters. your eyes
follow me around in the room
as i close the box
for later.

Lived through days

She found swallows which had crashed already dead
And dried flowers which would dust away;
She was breathing death before it was her time

(And then it didn’t come, and she became a hundred)

But there were days as well with too much life
With buttercupslight and lambs still happy for the slaughter,
There were days that might have been forever

In everything uniting she found power,
She read with all her strength as much as had been said,
From every word retrieving evidence
Of a reality and she was not alone.