"mother, what are these," I asked that afternoon
at the end of a long day of dust and faded memories
long-stored in trunks and crates just under the eaves
not even a week before they were to sell the house
the paper crepe-y and fragile as her mother's skin,
postage stamps from countries no longer found on maps
and mother's name from before she was my father's wife
all leave me trembling with something not familiar
her eyes, once fierce with parental conviction and certainty
now softer in the twilight of grandchildren and widowhood
spark and stir with memories I cannot see, but begin to feel
she is still passionate beneath the dusting of years
and I know, without her saying, that there was once a boy
who went away and never returned
"please," she begs with hands out-stretched
reaching for his voice folded in the onion-skin of yesterday
i hold them out to her, the holy grail of her girlhood
tied up in the pale blue ribbon that might have once held her hair
she does not stir, untie the soft knot or unfold a page
but lifts them to her face and breathes deeply a perfume lost
she lays them in her lap and gently fold her hands over his name
her wedding rings, now loose and heavy on her slender hands
are the only story I've ever known, and yet I glimpse
behind the wistful smile in her distant eyes there is a secret
she has held so tenderly that it has survived the decades of
responsibility, devotion, and a desire to live for us
and so I sit with her and hold the space for his return
the boy who held my mother when she was but a girl
the soldier who's letters waited until she was a widow
to remind her of the dreams she'd tied in ribbons on the day
she learned he always be a boy who went to war
