Vivi-enne
One day I will hear her voice —
The weather has turned
to the kind she was so fond of —
green turning red, orange, golden, purple,
blowing into the November wind.
I wind down through the back roads
along Hopkin’s Pond where we ditched school
so many afternoons I lost count.
This is the first time I’ve come here without her
but I am comforted by the mix of people
marching the beat to their own anthems,
young as we were, taking a stand against establishment.
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I am optimistic enough to join these younger people,
claim I have my own blues to chase,
join in drinking their whiskey, smoother than I remember.
Nobody talks much to me as I feign the far-off detachment
I will have the rest of my life.
For a moment, my eyes start scanning
for one more chance that does not come.
This good day, thoughts of her will bring no sadness,
no desire to return to the drugged air of our youth.
The sound of her accompanying violin rests quietly in memory,
just as recordings hold their place among performances of the past.
There will remain a trace of fondness
jesting between her existence and mine.
One day I will hear her voice — a woman in a bar ordering Jack on the rocks,
spot a face in some crowd with the same black penetrating eyes.
One day thoughts of her will bring only sweet remembrance:
tall white irises in her mother’s garden no one dared to pick,
Coke bottles filled with colored water on the window ledge
casting rainbows across the kitchen linoleum,
her mother’s orange Volkswagen that took us to Friday night games,
a ramshackle fort in her backyard sycamore.
And if the sublime holds me but once,
I will learn to reach back to stroke it forward again and again.
© Elisa Affanato
