The Persistence of a Memory of Apricot Shampoo

The Persistence of a Memory of Apricot Shampoo by Michael R. Burch For all that I remembered, I forgot her name, her face, the reason that we loved... and yet I hold her close within my thought: I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair that fell across her face, the apricot clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan. The memory of her gathers like a flood and bears me to that night, that only night, when she and I were one, and if I could... I’d reach to her this time and, smiling, brush the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact each feature, each impression. Love is such a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone before we recognize it. I would crush my lips to hers to hold their memory, if not more tightly, less elusively. Published by The Raintown Review, The Eclectic Muse, Kritya, Gostinaya (in a Russian translation by Yelena Dubrovin), Boston Poetry Magazine, Freshet, Jewish Letter (Russia), Poetry Life & Times, Sonnetto Poesia, Trinacria, The New Formalist, Pennsylvania Review Keywords/Tags: Sonnet, memory, persistence, memories, remember, remembrance, reminiscences, perseverance, love, name, features, face, hair, eyes, lips, crush, desire, longing, lust, impression, recognize, recognition, remember, remembered, forgot, forgotten, angel, wan, night, flood, apricot shampoo