erased from memory / Melissa Taylor

in the twilight hours of sleep
there’s enough consciousness,
enough awareness,
of how the mind
makes sense of life

a lens that reveals
photographs and vignettes
of life together with him,
snapshots frozen in time
of places they’ve been,
people they’ve met,
experiences shared

only this time,
for the first time,
she watches as
the memories play on
and he fades from her view,
disappearing
from photographs
as if he never existed at all

without warning she’s in places
with a crippling feeling
that she doesn’t belong,
that she’s never belonged

in the twilight of morning sleep
the sun breaks through
curtains and closed eyes
and empty memories,
the sounds of the day permeate
eardrums, becoming louder,
breaking the silence of hollow dreams.
she wakes to a place and a life
where she finally feels at home.

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Melissa Taylor is an occupational therapist and mother of two from New Jersey. Her poems have been included in the Raw Art Review and her first collection of poetry, A Skeleton of What Used to Be, was recently published by Between Shadows Press.