double memory
after The Afternoon Sun by C. P. Cavafy
This room, how well I know it.
This room, my tree-house, my nest
made of the breath of books,
sweat from watercolors,
in the shadow of branches
cast across 240 sunrises
now rented, packed up,
folded and tucked
in boxes, the sunrise still
seeps out.
This house, a double memory.
It is familiar like, photographs of daffodils are,
two years ago and still, I call you my little lantern
of the sun.
The way I loved you
simple, not indifferent,
lost with difficulty,
but still reborn
as something hopeful.
Mirror: list to me all of my favorite things.
Memory: things I wish to erase but still
they are the dark spaces who lift
their angry arms with the desire to dash out,
sunny spaces.
We moved the couch beneath the window.
We lit and burned wood in the fireplace when it was cold.
You on your knees with no ring then,
and still not now, would I say yes.
We left the couch there, for the new family
to move in upon.
Sundays, apple pancakes, poems written
across the backs of what we wouldn’t save,
what I wouldn’t ask for tomorrow,
regret nothing.
These things must be left somewhere.
At some vantage point, things discarded become beautiful.
Make you what you are.
We made love so many times.
These sad things must still be somewhere.
But then, the moonrise, and I lift my head
to look at my hand, to look at the pathway
left by the apple tree upon my fingers,
and straighten the leg perpendicular to earth,
to bear witness to everything I have been
and will ever be.
Next to the window was the bed;
the afternoon sun spread across halfway.
I haven’t forgotten the naming of things
in the mellow soft bloom
of a double memory,
spring who springs out
regardless of the memory
of what isn’t to happen,
just yet.