Left Luggage

Left Luggage

Five weeks into the silence you imposed,
The monsoon rain has breached our room
and I need move things, dry them and repack
lest they molder, and are destroyed.
And so it is I open your left luggage,
the bag of things you left behind
when you left here a thousand years ago.

Bereft, I hold these things you wore
when you were mine: feminine and soft,
they are so like the girl I thought I knew '
but lifeless husks, pointless as the relics
of some ancient saint to whom all pleas
and prayers are just a waste of breath.

In this haunted room I hold these fabrics
to my face, wondering if I too am now
left luggage. These rags of time
still bear the faintest traces of your scent,
faint, now, as the memory of your voice.

Po Wah Yuen
Mayday 2006