I pried open the tender lip
of the box—as careful as a sexton—
to hear the crimped secrets
it withheld all these years.
The softened wood trembled—
almost gave—under my fumbling hands.
Rather than tobacco leaves,
I smelled the scent of aged, yellowing paper.
I left the wispy rosewood lid—
ajar—so as to keep the spirits in.
Postcards lined the fragile walls
like taffeta in a coffin.
I turned it over—as if it were
a decanter—to let the last drop of sherry fall.
Newspaper clippings and receipts poured out,
and I smoothened their kinks on my knee.
I found a faded love letter—
wedged between the sheaves of crumbling wood—
Its sides were split open as if with a paper knife.
The return address was blotted out.
I wondered if the homesick hands wrote—
from afar—their spidery words crawling under my skin,
and if the author were much too lovelorn—his thoughts as illegible as his penmanship.
I pinched the time-stamped photographs
between my fingers—as prudent as a gardener— clipping the heads of the late summer roses
from the fading hedgerow.
It was a splintery echo-chamber,
the box,—my confidant—my abettor.
A conduit for lost voices
put away on the dresser.
It was brittle like a cicada shell
left behind on the ground;
The nymph flown out,
absconding to the pine trees—
