If cobwebs wrote love
poems, if children were born
in abandoned churches, if it rained
in department store
basements until the dust
on the metal shelving bloomed
back into soil, maybe then
i’d remember you in crowds

and track your sandal prints
on escalators. and maybe
if the ivy in graveyards wasn’t
so hungry, i’d believe in
a difference between transformation
and loss. but i’ve changed
like the books in the back
of the attic: i’ve yellowed,

crumpled, i think i disappeared a
little in translation, i wish
i had something more to write
with than eraser dust. and maybe
if they wired us alive like dinosaur
bones in smashed museum
cases, and maybe if we had more
than caterpillars shriveling
into butterflies, maybe then we could
find meaning in so many years
underground.

© 2014 Clarissa Grunwald

Image “Pyramids of Meroe” © Flickr user Scott D. Haddow

Clarissa Grunwald is a rising sophomore studying at Franklin and Marshall College. Her work has previously been published in BlazeVOX. She has also written a limerick that got painted onto a large plaster mule that now resides in the National Canal Museum. It's a long story.