Safekeeping
Sharon Kennedy-Nolle

Gone missing,

so I stood wincing
in the locksmith’s shop,
from the machine’s steady skreak,
of sparks and tinsel shavings
as he calmly cuts a key
to your safe.
From a click comes
the newly minted of nothing;

hinges sigh stale air.

How long since you’d cleared out?

All I have left is a lock
of your hair the coroner cut,
more splinters, really, (like down,
of which you never had much to spare).
Too clean, a clump of red filings
fluff the M.E. envelope.
Rusty filler smoldering color,
against the vellum flap
(not the way the sky flamed,
the day they finally found you).

Sunset dream of some DNA resurrection?
—If only I could have kept the valuables—

Sleepless nights I go
like a bloodhound
to the safe,
the envelope,
inhale the lanolin,
this substitute

howl for the bayed you,
not locked safe, not alive

Return to Archive