flood

for Pearline

nostalgia is such a strange feeling

sometimes I’m laughing, most times I’m not.

my memories are where you live now &

I always find that I’m dusting off your box & filling it with tears

your picture hangs in my fathers living room

but nobody talks about you and

I talk about you too much.

I write about you constantly,

talk about you with my friends and to myself,

what I would trade to be sitting across from you in your living room again but,

it’s useless to return to the past because nobody’s there.

everything is different,

though I keep expecting it not to be

I think that’s why the memories and flashbacks take so much out of me.

like,

oh yeah, those were the best times of my life.

Toni Morrison wrote about the river
that returns to its old path.
they call it flooding.

but this is not destruction,

it’s remembering.

remembering you

is returning to where I was known.