Memorial 2000

This is part of a two-part poem, or perhaps more properly two poems both memorials to the same person. The first remembers them living and here it is. It's a sad and painful remembrance, but one that is also sweet and tender; hence the poem tries to reflect the rawness of remembering tempered by the bitter-sweetness of nostalgia and shared joys recalled.
To D.C.


Memorial 2000


You have caused me,
more pain in the remembering,
than any hurt in real-time ever could.

From out of nowhere,
you assault me.
Stealing time.

I smell the newly opened pages of a book
and see again
the white desked college library

in springtime sun-
the sweetest silence,
the ordered rows of books.

The smell of you,
your skin golden,
your eyes on mine.

I inhaled deeply
And held it as long
As lung and heart could stand

until the pressure made me exhale.
And rushing back
Came shop and street and traffic

and rain and wind
and thirteen hard won years
and adulthood.

And my very bones ached.

Geraldine Moorkens Byrne

1.