He opens the drawer to the desk his father once owned,
that antiqued monolith from a man he never knew,
and removes a sealed, crusted envelope, his father's name
neatly penned in his mother's refined script.
He carefully slides the yellowed letter from the envelope,
unfolds it, and lays it upon the desk. As he smoothes
wrinkles from it, he reads the contents slowly, savors
the words like he once savored his mother's homemade fudge,
allowing the prose to seep into his mind
like the mellifluous melting of chocolate down his throat.
As his mother's words resound through his mind,
he recalls the austere diction of her voice,
the matter-of-fact, demanding pitch that he, as a child,
cringed in corners, hands over his ears to drown out the harshness.

The words he now reads upon faded gold sheets,
the tone of one in love, an air of magnetism and dignity,
are not words the mother he knew would convey.
And he ponders the man who left her,
why he never opened the letter from his wife,
if his coldness froze the flames of this woman
leaving her as frigid in life as she was in love.
And he wonders of the man knew a son was left behind
to pick up the icicles which fell from his mother's eyes
each time she gazed upon the photo of her husband.

He folds the letter and places it back inside the envelope,
lays it on top of a stack of his mother's mementos,
and as though to return passion to his own life,
tosses the entire contents into a waste basket, ignites
the icy memories of his family's past and watches
as flames rise, consumes, and turns them to ash.