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Famous Reporter # 23
June, 2001
 

               Shen

 

          The weight of dust

  

                     You can debate grey into the colour
                     of almost every subject matter, but on
                     the matter of dates, two weeks late will
                     always remain two weeks late.
                     I'm still trversing the stage of denial
                     to that of acceptance, but before I allow
                     a pregnancy test to draw a thick red line
                     across my life again, there's going to be time
                     to clear things upstairs in the attic.
 
                     Three years since I lost my only child.
                     Two days after her second birthday.
                     The past is perfectly objective when measured
                     in that way but sentiment falls like dust
                     on boxes of clothes - you blow, wipe,
                     brush, yet the next time you return to them
                     a film has settled again, and it's as if
                     you'd never made the effort in the first place.
 
                     The neat stacking of cases along these walls
                      is too tidy to store grief never completely out of reach.
                      Yet under this roof I find shelter - it's this room
                      which suffers the most extremes, when the rest of the house
                      we have carefully built around ourselves
                      keeps stubbornly to its narrow range.
                      Up here summer heat is always reluctant to go
                      at the end of day. Months pass and winter calls,
                      and every storm which batters the tiles overhead
                      reminds me that we are all only one layer away
                      from a season filled with rain.
 

 

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