BOX OF MEMORIES

The years cover them
as much as this rich earth

her memories we dig up
& there they are

good as new

all the things that
used to be you

buried
in a box.

Even the calligraphy
survives the years:

“TILLY’S MEMORY BOX.”

Your teenage self
takes your 3 year old

left blue shoe

cradles it
in your hand.

You have no
memory of it

only us telling you
the story of the memory of

“it”.

How the right blue shoe
was irretrievably lost

on holiday
floated out to sea

by a so curious you.

Somewhere before the horizon
sinking out of view.

But you wouldn’t relinquish the left
(and what it meant to you)

how you wouldn’t go to sleep
without it

clutched in your grasp
for a year or more

until we buried it in this
box of Tilly things.

A broken rattle
wrapped in silence

a chipped glass heart
wrapped in pink & blue tissue paper

a magnetic elephant
clinging for dear life

to the bottom of the box
labelled “TILLY’S MEMORIES.”

I watch you
cry for you

(and I cry too)

for your forgotten self

big unreal
tears plashing

into your open palm

as you
retrieve from Time

the things
that were yours

your frail body
sobbing against my shoulder

like you used to do
when you were my little girl

a left blue shoe
clutched in your hand

now
&
then

as you attend
the resurrection of the you

you
never knew

until now.