Return to Sender

This wall I remember,

Not grizzled grey but resplendent red,

Sheltering fruitlessly now

The yellowing rosebush

Strewn unkempt along a splintered pathway

I walk now contrariwise

To her door,

Peeling paint; a rusty knocker,

The tap provoking memories

Submersed in marrow;

A beatless heart within a graceless cadaver

Standing insipidly on a barren porch

Braced like a twig against the onslaught of

Inexorable alteration

The handle turns slowly, like the hands

Of a dying clock, and the hinges cry

With the effort of motion

Eventually she is there, framed;

A static zoetrope

Grateful, then overwhelmed,

‘I thought you were the postman’

No, I am simply the letter she posted

Some thirty years before