Summertime drips cool along
my kitchen floor, barefoot all the while
and little gravel pits between my toes.
I know that times like these come
few and far between, when lilacs are
in full bloom and you have time to smell them.
It never comes this high, you say.
And so I stand there, glibly sniffing
all morning in the sandy dirt, barefoot.
You knew me in a different time, when the
same scent yielded to a different fortune.
You turned the corner only to find me stuck
in one place. My fortitude was ingratiating,
you’d complement with attitude. I never knew
the levy would break in this exact place.
I never knew that you would see in me the
clues that you had left for another person for another
era. The 500 year flood plain meant nothing to me.
So much to lose. So much to lose.
I wouldn’t know what I would set on the curbside these
days. Old photographs, even the ones that weren’t
destroyed by water. And lilac blooms, the ones that were
tall enough to live. I am tall enough to live. You never
knew me when I wasn’t. You can’t mistake me
for who I had been before. It is always the case
that the present changes the future. Don’t marvel
at that, dumbly.
So it shall continue. The standing straight, keeping my
head high above the fray, even when it has all receded.
Don’t come to find me now in my despair. I do not
want to know you in this way.
Copyright 2008 Maia Twedt
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