Remembering Her Memories

Delicate
embroidery –
amber blown glass
figurine – air-light silver
bracelet chain – tiny charms –
happy tale of children’s arms around
each other’s waists – laughter, boredom and
the chaste dissociation of suppressed sad recollections
she was told she oughtn’t entertain: second-
hand, like secrets handed round a fire-

side in winter, fairy tales involving

someone utterly not you:
someone who had
bred you into
being
but

was otherwise
as alien to your experience
as movies made of Dickens’ stories; other
people’s glories riven into such translucent helplessness
that you must softly wrap them up in
tissue and replace them
in their musty
drawer

in
much
the way you’d
harbor anything of which
to an incontrovertible degree there never
would, or could, be more.
These were hers
not yours
and
yet
their date
of utter obsolescence

lies with you: their fragile tendrils
will evaporate exactly
when the mess
of you takes
off. Odd,
how
you
can hear
the echo of her cough.

.