The attic door groans open
and a golden rectangle of light
slices through the dust-motes dancing.
They rise like ghosts from the floorboards.
I breathe in the quiet: the cedar chest,
the forgotten woolens,
the pressed scent of my grandmother’s garden
in the pages of a photo album.
A time-capsule of air.
Here is the moment, captured
not by film, but by feeling—
the weight of a hand
in a smaller, more innocent one.
A bicycle chain rattling on pavement.
The quill moves, not by rhyme,
but by the stutter and flow of memory.
It draws not a perfect circle,
but a meandering river,
etching the details no one else remembers.
The scrape of a fork on a forgotten plate.
The precise way the light fell through the kitchen window,
making the jam jars glow like amber.
The past isn’t a story told in sequence.
It is a collection of sensations,
a jolt in the humdrum present.
A scent of honeysuckle pulls you backwards,
a familiar song on the radio
takes your breath away.
It is all there, folded into the fabric of the now,
a tapestry woven with threads of forgotten joy,
and a sweet, deep ache
for the version of yourself
who lived it.
I am quite fond of meandering rivers when it comes to poetry. The uneven flow that defies rhyme but gives us a steady beat and focuses on painting the picture for us rather than confining itself to form.
Old dusty attics are so cool. We never know what we will find up there.
j.
I appreciate that.