When you erase my voice from your telephone,
my number from your dog-eared book
When you never speak my name anymore
When the private jokes are forgotten
When you pull the bookmark from my pages,
return the volume to its shelf.
When my recipes are handed down
from the parties they just don’t give anymore
When my scent is off the sheets
When the radio dial is turned
When acquisitions become artifacts,
fossil records of impulse
When my room has been entered
When the books, seashells, rocks, scissors,
papers are inventoried
When my face in photographs
stops you in your tracks
When you have to explain who that was,
flushed and grinning on the mountain top.
This article appears in January 2012.
