She sits in her glass room misting the mirror
With her breath
As if to say-
Here, I am, still alive; while
Her fingers, as brittle and fragile as new icicles
Or freshly blown glass
Touch the framed memorials
Of the people she once knew
She smiles gently as she
She imagines them waving from the windows
Of an old car, pressing their fingers against
The glass pane- goodbye, goodbye
As they left, she reaches for the blank telephone
That rings a riddle she cannot decipher
The voice says her name, quivering, quietly
A sharp pain, like the broken glass that
Cut her hand as she bent to pick it up, yesterday-
Embarrassed, as the unfamiliar man sat holding his head
Crushing the two gold zeroes in his palm
The glass looks like crystal-snow,
She was saying, as he crossed the room fiercely
It is only me- she recoils, trembling at this stranger
Against the glass of the window,
I’m sorry I don’t-
Remember, he says, again
This pale, urgent groom with the forlorn face
Pushing the blank gold into her palm
Cool as the cellophane glass of a forgotten house
Near the sea, an old summer holiday-
She tastes the old salt of her tears
As he leaves, the faint ghost of the life she
Used to have, but now cannot remember,
Exactly, what she forgot.
