Poem No. 6: From Memory

Down the memory pipe, 
there are mirrors 
I don't wish to return to.

The form of it - a 
kind of missing:
a middle of the night
nightmare gasp,
a sharp inhale,
the murmur 
of a name. 
Or strange dreams 
where I wake up
and ask why?
And hold that close. 

Which is to say,
missing is a memory
already a part of me,
it's buried deep,
a subconscious seeping. 

Or else missing is a kneading
like a cat kneads for her mother
when it already knows there isn't 
a mother to milk; an ingrained action,
no longer meaning the tightly wound knot 
of shared moments lost, but rather the precious
presence of those moments in real-time:
seeking that which isn't there, finding
contentment otherwise in what is. 
Emotional adaptation? I'm not sure. 

But I do tend to miss my mom and
my cat. No one else really. (Maybe
there's a worry aligned with that missing.)

Only because 
our moments 
worth missing
were those experienced
while we were running for our lives
towards where we all are right. now. 
We each know this: there is no time to miss. 
For too long anyway, to dwell on it. To write on it. 

I once wished for a room with everything I've lost. Items, I mean. Eye-glasses. Rings. Stolen clothes. A diamond earring. Gifts. A blue velvet ballet flat in the middle of a tunnel. Each time I'd felt so bad for losing the thing, for it was worth money and/or it was a symbol of a relationship, you know, like a matching friendship bracelet.  That missing I didn't want to feel of the lost thing would come back if I only saw it, held it in my hands like a forgotten relic, talisman, protecting its wearer from the very thing this is all about: missing. 

Oh! The thing I miss most: the piano. I just remembered. Not then, with the knife chopping in the background or the television blaring on about roses and bachelors. I don't even miss it for now - there's no where it could go. I miss it for the future, a future enveloped safely in silence until the first strike of the first key.