I Kept Our Pictures in my Bedside Drawer,

VICTORIA NGUYEN

with a letter I'll never send you. anyway 

how much time does it take for your memory of someone to become flat, like a faded sticker left 

on a dashboard in an abandoned car?

when you reach a suspended hand into your brain and find 

a friend, that someone, your heart and your good morning songbird  

has lost their motion-picture quality. 

will their eyes lose that sparkle - when once they were as real as the blood that wells from  every paper cut? 

do their smiles fade like news ink from a crumbling headline?

it's sad that when we had each other, 

we held on like we were abandoned treasure at the bottom of a forgotten sea, like fossils washed up on a lonely shoreline. 

gentle, with care, and under glass. 

growing warmer under the sun. and maybe getting too hot.

maybe open the glass?

(a crack)

and out of the sun

where we found our love grew less.

shoving each other in our back pockets for later, for some other time. 

to worry about, not now, but 

later. soon, next week

- maybe?

freezing the good times cold on polaroids and just kept in the dark,  

the dust startling to the touch.  

and now I never look at them, afraid.

that once I put you under the glass,  

the crinkles around your eyes will re-emerge from the depths, and I will

again seek treasure in the sunlight of your eyes.