Sepia of Memory

A word is but a touch. This poem is the trace of a touch
that vanishes... and yet lingers in the air.

The windowpanes whispered with a scar -
something still whispers in the silence there,
where the saffron, withered into an echo,
rests in an old tome.

This is a flower. The dry twitching of a dream,
that slid down from memory,
like a silver sound from lips.
A name forgotten. The loss - as if it never were,
only the fragility of old warmth.

A broken stem - a sign of fading.
Sepia in the heart, a gray dawn.
The page creaks - not from pain,
but from time, which weathered the voice.

The silk of thoughts rustles - who is she?
Whose warmth is in those petals?
Whose fingers touched the leaf,
and why is there this void within me?

I remember - and flee as a shadow.
In the dried flower - my own shadow.
It whispers: "you, too, were me..."
...and I no longer know which of us has vanished.

When the last memory turns to dust,
the body disappears in the whisper of decay.
Only the flower remained... and even that - not quite:
for even it -
was blown away
by the eternal
wind
from
the tomes.