by T. E. Taylor
Even when you left,
I kept some pieces of you:
words and crosses scribbled
on thin card; images
of smiles and sunshine,
small gifts from another time
now too painful to look at,
too precious to lose.
I made a box for them: square,
solid, secured with a lock.
In the box, they were safe,
they were harmless –
that lacquered wood lid
had the power of forgetting.
If they burned or fermented
it stayed in the box.
Until yesterday,
seeing your face in the street.
That look, like the turn of a key
and that sound, in the silence
of your box – and mine –
of the drawers sliding open,
the clatter of relics
strewn out on the ground.
First published in Leaving (Hammond House 2020)