Years and weeks and months later
I still find your traces
in unlikely places
like bobby pins.
Seeds planted in
my furniture and floorboards
grow evermore,
like the thoughts you still cause me to think.
Like... I find them on the edge of my sink.
My car seats
and couch cushions
grow bobby pins;
shaken off diff'rent trees
by fights and long goodbyes,
and flings that taught more than love.
What else would explain
the way they sprout, unbidden,
hidden like a stray hair
to stay there
until the day where
I needed them least?
Like when, during renovations,
I found one tightly stationed
below the century floor trim
and thought, like a goon,
something to the tune
of "sucks for him."
Assuming some poor guy
committed the same clear cut as I.
Your hair -
once everywhere -
has been gone
so long,
but its accomplices,
these bent, ferrous,
little sticks
still bear the copper taste
of memory.
Once in a great while
they can make me smile
when I find another
and dream that I'll
plant a few, one of these days.
But when these planted seeds
grow to trees,
they bring my intuition
to fruition -
like the time in the past when I looked forward to what would come.
And years and weeks and months from now
I'll count my graces
to find your traces
in unlikely places,
like bobby pins.
-Alexander Black - October 2017
