we pass at dusk the road to wandering mem’ries.
Whose house was that, I visited once, so young…
time did not pass then but stayed, the moments one upon the other
Intertwined, tangled.
One fringe of false eyelash, left behind on alabaster sink
where someone’s wife later found it
the eyelash not being hers, of course,
but mine
forgotten there while she, away on holiday
slept peacefully through our stolen night,
the end
of our beginning.
Echos of retribution rise now like smoke from ancient chimneys
seeking forgiveness against a lavender sky
powerless to forgive.
In the Jacaranda season, narrow limbs reach outward
light now spilling golden there, upon new gardens growing.
Too much forgotten, of picket fences taller then,
like children grown and gone
that once, upon the sweet, musk smell of summer understood
but now are everywhere gone
leaving this,
we have only this:
that once
we were alive.
Author Bio:
Sally Stevens has worked in music as a singer, in TV, in Film scoring, in Sound Recordings and in concert for --- many -- decades. Her poetry and fiction have been included in Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, Mockingheart Review Poetry, Raven's Perch Poetry, The OffBeat, Funny in Five Hundred, Between The Lines Anthology: "Fairy Tales & Folklore Re-imagined", and in No Extra Words podcast.
She has always loved writing, and has spent the last 21 summers at University of Iowa doing the Writing Festival workshops.