Memory's Refrain

Gathering in the rooms
of your abandoned childhood
without taking up space.

Unfurling like smoke
around bedposts and dressers
and the legs of your parents
towering above you.

Giving itself the time it needs
for time is its medium
and its messenger.

Flowing with a light so
treacherous in its certainty
that the edge and fill
of even fragmentary images
and fading sensations
are etched in your cells.

Turning like a dancer
as she takes on the wavering
shapes and poses of life
eidetic and lives abandoned.

Reveling in the least detail
as well as drowning
in the largest events.

Arriving most often
in solitude and overflowing
with a tumult you cannot hear.

(First appeared in author's collection Shades Fantastic, 2006)