THE MEMORY ATTIC OF MY BRAIN

He's gone.
I'm alone.
And I'm able to find nothing
But a deep void inside.

Now only memories are what I have
And I need to find them - those memories -
Must look in the place they might be
Buried deep in the memory attic of my brain.

I look and quickly find boxes scattered there, all to and fro
Without organization or indication of what's inside;
No word; no hint of what each might store or hide
Right there in the memory attic of my brain.

The boxes had been made safe and secure
Closed tightly, shut with ribbons and bows
Of every color - pink, yellow and blue,
Green, red and purple, too.

Others are shut with bands, string and rope of all kinds
With a small number of boxes tightly sealed with tape,
There in the deepest-black-darkened recesses
Beneath the eaves in the memory attic of my brain.

I decide to begin, not knowing where to start - what I will find,
Blowing, brushing, removing the time-dusts gathered on their tops,
Then slowly start to open the first box that I see
To find what is stored inside it - that box found in the memory attic of my brain.

Like the bellies of women abruptly pouched out hundreds of years back
When their tight corsets were unbound and removed,
Memories burst forth as if under pressure for years
From that first-opened box stored in the memory attic of my brain.

The memories I seek are those only of me with him
The man whom I loved and lived with for those decades of years;
The friendship; the love-seed which took root and then grew
And kept us together - all cherished memories of time shared.

Our adventures, our experiences as partners
In the time he loved me and I loved him,
When he always was him and I always was me,
None lost, but carefully saved there in the memory attic of my brain.

Helen Rhinehart
LONGMONT, CO