I stuck my hand in the pocket
Of one of your ancient wool coats.
Unworn for many years, too small for me,
It had obviously fit a much younger, trimmer you.
Inside I found a single well-handled pink tissue,
Very fragile, but still in one piece.

I held it up, in awe of its age.
It was then I saw the glimmer
Of infinitesimal crystals;
****** secretions from the distant past.
At once I imagined you outside,
Nose running freely in the cold air,
Furtively brushing your nose now and again
With the tissue, before reburying it
In the satin-lined pocket.

As I held it up in the dim light of the bedroom,
A furtive breeze, aided by the shaking
Of my hand, unlocked the tiny prisms
From the weave of pinkness,
And they dispersed into the air invisibly,
Like the popping of silent bubbles.

A delicate part of you had been returned,
Freed, into the constantly moving stream of life,
Now released from a silken *******.
I bowed my head in wonder at it;
That you were gone from me now,
And yet here was this most human statement left behind,
An outpouring from your once vibrant body.

And I had just touched you again,
And could feel you floating all around me,
Finer in the air, than ashes from a cremation,
Was this dust of ashes
From a long lost Winter day
And then, I breathed you into me
Just for a few minutes, and watched
As the boundaries of time and space were suspended.