Reminders of Before, sweetly ebb back;

I savor the croons from my father’s rocking chair,

the nectar from the old mango tree,

or the whistling between our swings.

The dresses of ivory, I said were like porcupine prickles,

delicately preserved in boxes, now forever unworn.

Decaying proof of who we once were, frozen flashes of time shielded in glass

— never will we be there again.

The never sends the flooding fear;

of erased time, disappearing lives,

that slips swiftly — uncaring to our wants.

The tender return acts as an escape from the chaos of now.

Grabbing at all we can keep, we are greedy for time. For what we had,

clutching it in our ironclad grip of longing until

it trickles through our hands, sailing away to forgotten memories.