LOST, LOST LIKE PHOTOGRAPHS CLUTCHED AFTER DISASTER

the only thing left in rubble.
This envelope, none of it
would matter to anyone else.
The one whose eyes were
black glass. “Man with an
accent called w.c.b.l—will
call back later. Saved from
when I was 17 like the rose
pink sweater I wore for him,
breaking every date when
he called. “Vermillion
dress and your blue bikini,
hardly there,” the man who
sounded like another
California man wrote in
a 12 page note, the colors
wrong. The memory glisten-
ing. So carefully filed, so
close. I might have been
a mother too intent on
protecting a child, swaddled
to suffocation. Only those
few mementos to keep
safe as if to keep the
ones they came from, the
ones I couldn’t keep,
and now can’t even
keep ghosts of

by Lyn Lifshin