The Democracy of Memory by Yvonne Morris

We rode a train one-way to the ragged Atlantic,

honeymooning in February—shivered on wintry

sand. Flew home to our nest, so torrid in summer,

candles stored atop the refrigerator melted. Left

 

its scored linoleum floors to walk to work, passing

deserted clusters of warehouses, like old gray men

huddled together post-war, recalling black market

plunder. We lived for some fairytale to awaken.

 

And—in its own cycle, in its own run—as

breathing makes a chest rise and fall, rise and fall,

that bright but broken ocean, feathered ridges

whitening the shore again, remembered us.