I'm not good with hello's or goodbyes
because when you are someone as invisible
as a whisper on the wind
as the atoms in our skin
or a melody trapped within
there's no one waiting to greet you
and no one there to leave you

I'm just a cellophane wrapped scream
waiting to be heard,
waiting to be seen

Album
by Michael R. Burch

I caress them—trapped in brittle cellophane—
and I see how young they were, and how unwise;
and I remember their first flight—an old prop plane,
their blissful arc through alien blue skies ...

And I touch them here through leaves which—tattered, frayed—
are also wings, but wings that never flew:
like Nabokov’s wings—pinned, held. Here, time delayed,
their features never merged, remaining two ...

And Grief, which lurked unseen beyond the lens
or in shadows where It crept on furtive claws
as It scritched Its way into their hearts, depends
on sorrows such as theirs, and works Its jaws ...

and slavers for Its meat—those young, unwise,
who naively dare to dream, yet fail to see
how, lumbering sunward, Hope, ungainly, flies,
clutching to Her ruffled breast what must not be.

Keywords/Tags: album, photos, photographs, pictures, mementos, keepsakes, cellophane, yellowed, leaves, pinned, held, imprisoned, time, delayed

maybe if i wrap our memories
in cellophane
they won't escape me
like you did.

They sat with chests to each other,
Legs crossed.
Sad brown eyes staring into
Sympathetic blue.
Brown tears began to fall,
While blue watched,
Wiping them away carefully,
As almost if her fingers could create
Holes in the other girl’s cheeks.
They both had flowing tears now,
Both wiping them away.
Brown, unknowingly rougher with blue,
Than blue had been with brown.
A bit of anger towards blue showing,
Being overcome by love.
In eachothers arms,
breathe was the words spoken
Followed by scripted I love you’s
The moment wrapped in cellophane broke.
Tears ended,
Cellophane ripped away,
Distance made.
Blue was not aware that brown’s sadness
Had visited once she left her arms.