How can it be so hot at night?
How can I be so awake
that my eyelids don’t block my sight?
One of these days I’ll paint this room.
It’s so dark that the walls
themselves project the gloom.
In the corner
is a shelf
full of books
you had read
In a book
are the thoughts
someone wrote;
I wish I said
From this book
falls a photo
you had kept
to mark the pages
In the picture
we are happy,
just a snapshot
to mark our ages.
Now it separates
words you read,
thoughts you absorbed,
from author’s verse – unaware.
Now it separates
times of joy,
memories of love,
from broken dreams that I’ll never repair.
How can one picture be so final?
How can it invoke you
yet make life so fictional?
I wish the photo had an inscription,
A glimpse at the other side,
a sense of hope, a vision.
But the back is without remark
And you, like the picture
remain a bookmark.