Pink Ochre Magazine

Today, I went into the linen closet,
filled with more than linens;
our vacuum, the heating pad
empty suitcases, old lamps
and other things we’ve collected over the decades
and have nowhere else to store.

I dug out a shoebox containing
old photos of us. Of you.
You, with your blonde, 80’s perm,
sitting on the porch of your college house,
one leg on the swing, one leg off,
wearing light blue jeans, white socks and shoes,
clutching a cat to your chest, looking at me.

I can remember it like it was yesterday.
But, of course, it wasn’t.

Oh, to go back,
lay down the camera and ask you
what you want to do the rest of the day
as the cat bounds off your lap and runs away.
To feel that flutter in my heart, the yearning,
the optimism and joy of our new love.

I glance at the two small sunflowers
in an old mason jar
I gave you days ago.
Still the purest and brightest yellow,
but they are bowing their heads.
Their downcast brown disk

facing the kitchen table where you placed them.

I guess they are wilting.
I don’t know much about flowers.
I’ll leave it to you to decide when
it’s their time to go.

But I do know,
that even when they are tossed,
and their brilliant gold has faded,
if, seeing them in the trash,
our children were to ask what they were,
we’d say,
“Those are sunflowers.
At one time they lifted their faces to the sky,
glorious, hopeful,
and thought they would never die.”

​