My Fingers Touch...
(an offshoot of an older poem...)

It happens  any minute of any day...the empty feeling...the sadness, the grief visit...all are put on hold...yet, they make me realize all the more,  grieving isn't over yet...
i think of the ones gone...but, there are people around me, with pressing needs...faces that get bored, but can't be ignored, needing my say and my care.

Mornings, i work around visible reminders...i touch them, i feel them...they take me back, while dusting old furniture,
window sills, and curtain frills.

My fingers touch the old bookshelf, i see Tortilla Flat, Perry Mason,
The  Raven, The Virginian
i find myself in a different era.

My fingers touch old framed pictures and photo albums, and i am slowly unburdened, sighing out unwanted energy.

My fingers touch the old bed, the old seal, the old vases...i am saddened, but comforted, by tangible souvenirs.

My fingers touch my temples, and the old memories, old dreams come back... it's the same face with the smile that never fades,
the same one that still shyly reassures me.

Never saw my father, yet he always smiled at me in my dreams.
perhaps, it was his way of telling me, he wasn't physically with me,
yet, he never left me.
despite his absence, he knows me, us, and we know him well.
i felt him closest when going through a dilemma, or when i was ill.
there was this loving presence,
only i can know...i was sure it was him
i miss the comforting warmth of those moments.

My mother had told us more than enough---their love story, dreams and plans cut short
where I got the shape of my face, my nose, my legs...my fingers
even my allergies,
the funny names he called my siblings and I, his funny tales,
his rocking chair
the events when he died...how he died
where he died...what time he died.

We knew him well
through those stories my late mother told us
through those accounts passed down to us by my late aunts
through my dreams that never have faded.

I realized
he was with us, all the way
silently...invisibly

...we never lost him at all...


Sally

Copyright March 28, 2015
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan