image from poetess' personal scrapbook
poem submitted to "1446 Your Choice" poetry contest, Brian Strand, sponsor, February 23, 2026.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We bury our ghosts in shoeboxes~ photographs curling at the edges, a ticket stub from a train that no longer runs. Remember how the air smelled when we were twelve? Like cut grass and gasoline, Remember the tin-can laughter of bicycles tipping into dusk. Now the past is a bruise we press just to feel the sweet ache of color~ your mother’s voice stitched into the static of an old answering machine, the way the porch light swayed in a storm, casting shadows that danced like the people we thought we’d become. Does time heal or does it just layer the wound with softer things: the weight of a cat long since buried, the exact blue of a sweater you outgrew by spring. We kneel in the attic, sifting through what’s left~ not relics, but proof that we were here once, loud and unafraid, before the world whittled us into silence.
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