Remains

I can only recall one summer

Spent there. Though exactly where

Cannot be recounted by those

Who led me. Faint and faded remains

Of those shabby doors, lollipops—red

Bicycles and wooden floors

Creeps in with the faint scent of cut grass.

I’d return and re-burn chopped wood, centered

Amidst indiscernible faces, if I could,

But I can’t. The posted signs poised

Stealthily along the journey there, signs

I once studied to condense the time and

The lengthy trip has blurred in with

Rosy cheeks. Now all I have is this.

This feeble attempt to reunite scattered

pieces of an exhumed labyrinth. Still,

the decay is too far-gone. I hardly recognize

any of it any more. River banks and clear

blue skies are all I can see clearly, yet

The longing for what and who I can’t recollect

still remains alongside the remains of this puzzle.

Its immortality will sustain long after I am gone.