Tonight she remembers

It happened.
Although her mother
told her it did not,
she knows
by the way
the wind speaks to her tonight
that it did. She feels
by the way
the shadows of darkness
echo the secrets of her past,
how the barks of her dog
remind her of one
rainy evening
when she was running barefoot
on Calle Sacristia,
dressed like one of the Ziegfeld girls
she remembers watching
somewhere on the other side of the world,

and she was screaming his name.

Nicholas.
Where is he?
Where is he now?
He is the child who call her Mama.
He is her child.

His husband sits beside her,
convinces her to sleep,
promises her of better mornings,
tells her stories she knows are

untrue.

She’s the mother—
what is this man thinking?

The flashbacks drip
too much truth to be
mistaken as mere figments
of imagination.

Ah, lies and overridden yesterdays—
they could only
too much to rescue
the heart of a woman
who lost her child.