Soapbox

The Open Door

We collect mementos
to try to keep the absent, present
and the past alive.
Letters and photographs, ticket stubs and trinkets,
Each brittle cicada skin of  experience,
retains only the shape of past joys.
Nothing contained in any box or book
can equal the connection of that rare, transcendent moment
of the open door.

It is an instant of true memory,
a tiny grain of time in my hand.
In a sudden, brilliant flash of sight and sound,
scent and motion,
the door winks open,
spilling a moment of light and warmth
into the dark, silent corridor
which is the space that exists between life and death,
between then and now,
between you and me.

In that unexpected instant
when the door appears before me,
I see you, I hear you-
for you are standing there.
You turn your head toward me,
lips just beginning to curve
in a smile that stops my heart
as the door swings shut again
and disappears.
Only the dark, unyielding walls of loss
surround me once more.

But I know now that you are out there…
in here,
patiently waiting,
unreachable and unchanging.
And so I go on,
watching and hoping for another glimpse
through the open door.

This is the third piece I have written about a type of memory event  where the mind suddenly accesses a depth of recall you did not know it still retained- something more than a simple memory, and closer to a visitation.
Or perhaps it is merely a glimpse through an open door into what awaits.