Homecoming

Dark eyelashes and
The taste of cigarettes,
the fringe of my memory. Blue Mountains
strike the sun low—it bleeds across the sky
into the coming dusk.

There I was silent witness to your theft:
pale legs crossed, navy skirt, draped
innocently over the oak branch of a grandfather tree.
The favorite perch of my girl, my childhood friend
with whom I discovered the world—

Now you with your brok
en laugh and hol low smile
and cheap makeup

A stolen memory.
    usurper.
        thief.

Visiting home after a century, I found you instead...
Instead of her. A puzzle piece
warped by spilled alcohol, never
to fit squarely again.

Disillusion is nostalgia’s disappointment.

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