My youth wears your scent
Everywhere I will sniff 
for the slightest whiff of us
until one by one strands of hair turn gray with years
year after year the spool of time unwinds.
 
My mind is an empty room I cannot enter
I left the keys behind
As I came to visit you again
I brought a big bouquet of your beloved oxeye daisies
that are nothing like you,
even though you told me time after time
that these tender patches of yellow and white
were you in a past life.
 
On my way here I passed by
the wharf where we said our first goodbyes
remembered the day you wore a white blouse, a puffy skirt,
a smile brighter than any bloom on earth, and told me
that your voyage was but a short leave
that with the dancing dockside reeds
you would hang your heart on the pier.
Did you know mine was there too?
It dangled there waiting for you,
braving the tides for the sight of a white sail.
 
Perhaps somewhere beyond the sun
the sail on your ship still stands stiff against the wind.
A voyage across the stars must not be a short one.
As hurriedly as you left you leave
an unfinished mess scrawled on a three-foot headstone
the letters of your name crawling neatly along its face
the only constants in your unscripted legend.
 
Draped in an old quilt stitched of tattered romances and scraps of childhood
with the drifting red poppies as your herald
you wave off this dreary world.
 
Soon the grass by your grave will have died and thrived and died again
When I come to visit again I wonder
if you will still be wandering towards the next.