Love Letters Poem by Bob Bowers

Her hand reaches in,
Slowly,
And touches love,
Lying there

Tucked away
In this small drawer,
Beneath hand-printed cloths
And words written long

Before,
When first it was
She touched that other hand,
That wrote those words

Peeling back the layers
Of her life,
She takes up the crisp,
Now dry tears of those words

It is love
She has let lay there,
That now floods back,
Drowning out her breath

Torn she was then,
Torn now,
No different despite these years,
Births, deaths, losses

One touch
On that skin of words
Upon her heart
Carries her down its crushing avalanche

A door latch clicks
Her life calls out
And she closes that drawer of her life,
Slowly.




Summer,2002