Poem 16

Reminiscence

Long ago a child of five
walked towards me.
She didn't look hungry.
Rather her eyes
betrayed an appetite
for something that the over-priced
café had failed to offer:

a chance to ask
how vast a world
divides the two of us,
she in her innocence,
me in my negligence to want
what I earned;

or to make a playground
where we assign new roles
to dining objects over-used.

The encounter was real, though
details were subject to change.
She could've been wearing white
while I might've been lying
about being alone.

My habits live on,
like going out mid-morning
to relish a dry town.
Deep into the sky silence,
she visits
as she were — always five,
taking a seat
without permission
at a table inside my mind.

I wish I was the same ghost to her,
alive in a whisper and fits
into crannies none can feel
nor understand, not at all
a filler but a fullness
briefly possessed.

—Razel Estrella