Remembrance

Your laugh walks on the wind and builds
a house in my ear
where it lives while you are away, protected
from those same winds that sometimes blow hard
and expose bare feelings like frozen ground
buried under fallen leaves.

I never completely forget
how funny you look in a chef’s hat
or how you like listening to A Horse
With No Name,
and maybe I hold these things tightly
and my mind refuses to accept
that you are not coming back

because everything seems smaller in context now,
and these are the smallest and most delicate
pieces I have of you.