What Once We Were

Stiff in time’s tinted arms, we are encapsulated in ivoried amber, snagged in pastel photographs or conjured by words like treasured cuttings we have tossed asunder into wind. Years take faces away, leave locust hulls crisp in early autumns— translucent sticks of what was once us for a moment, fragments of what we’ll never be again. Ancient stone footprints lead to sea’s edge, diminish into scampering tide, pull us out of ourselves toward final embraces, brief flashes in evening sky dimming like flesh toward dusk.