I long for you to enter my room
With that expression on your face,
That childlike smile, your curiosity,
Your gesture walking away from
Your loneliness. You came to me to escape
Your demons and I was too young to notice it.
I put your hairbrush against my nostrils
And felt you disappear more and more.
I could smell that you were dead.
Your absence was reflected in all of your objects.
I touched the inanimate and breathed you in.
I wanted your clothes to become my blanket.
My mind sometimes makes you reappear
As if you had never left but then the poignant
Pain ambushes my chest, the brain engulfed by heat,
I think of you, the impossibility of steps, opening doors,
Your face, your warmth, a fainting voice, across the
Half-closing windows in my memory.
“Profile of a Woman with a Braided Knot” by Daniel Huntington (1816-1906)
Croque-Melpomene 