From the vault

I'm hoping to get inspired to really, really start writing again.

In the mean, here is one more recent discovery:


Summer of Sam

It's an old photo, the beginnings of their
collective history.

Can you tell what I'm holding, he asks.
I think a law book, think this is when he passed the Bar,
think it's the Summer of Sam
when he would ask her to pick him up— Main Street, Flushing—
despite her long brown hair and mounting fears.
So does she.

Of course, I remember it wrong, having
never been there. Having not even been a thought
to them.

It is my fault—their child—for refreshing her incorrect memory.

I see that now;
See how I've stepped in, disrputing the chronology.

It's a checkbook, he says. I was buying
your mother her engagement ring.

He cracks a joke
about his generosity. And,
he is generous.

I am not, with my false memories
of events I
have not witnessed.

They are so young, and
they are smiling
so broadly.

He, with his checkbook,
his first major purchase.
Later, more will follow:
mortgages, children, college educations;
the buying of a life.

And, she, gazing forward
with eyes burning, fierce. As dark
as her long chestnut hair.

Later, she will cut it, shorter
and shorter,
dying it, lighter
and lighter. Trading
cosmetics for youth. Seeking
the protection she lacked
so many years prior.