Her fingertips tease the seams of the tattered trunk,
Like a recovered remnant of the Titanic,
Rotting velvet lid cap,
Torn paper liner,
Tilting, listless shelves.
The scent of two centuries of existing
Slowly seeping into her sympathetic senses,
The smell sparking a myriad of imaginings;
Like a menagerie of nostalgic rememberings
A kaleidoscope of irreconcilable memories,
The trunk tells many bold and treacherous tales;
She lets the stories play out in her mind
As she runs her hands across the cracked leather,
Visualizing the hand driven rivets of the trim,
Fingers stopping ever so slightly to pause on the cool steel,
The circular clasps and the rusty, broken locks.
She suddenly smells the salty sea air of the helm of a steam ship,
She sees a silk handkerchief with a lipstick print,
Seductively scented with her own blend of oil of lilac and rose water,
Quietly clutched with subconscious desperation
In the front pants pocket of his threadbare blue jeans.
A bouquet of flower wilts in a vase,
It adds a semblance of mourning
To amplify the loneliness of the scene,
The candles and the curtains drawn low in her cold, dreary cabin
She leans, shuddering, crying over the side of the trunk,
Red rouge making red rivers of silent tears
That run rampant down trembling, rose coloured cheeks,
She lifts the tin of his aftershave,
Breathes him in one more time before going to bed.
The gentle rocking of the ships stern lulls her to sleep.
And with a sigh,
The girl is sleeping too,
A gentle smile playing on her lips,
Her limp wrist still reaching for another story from the magic steam trunk that lies open
In the barest corner of her room.
