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[silverflurry.livejournal.com]

Thick and Thin

Time thickens.
Sticky, taffy-brown,
the malleable gunk of family
memories, resemblances, resentments,
anecdotes thumped and punched
by a succession of urgent hands
hardens and cools, but early lumps remain,
fingerprints, palmprints, even marks of teeth.
You spend a lifetime trying to smooth these out.

Time thins.
To the original mix nothing is added
but a steady trickle wrung from years,
a faintly salty broth, not tears, not sweat.
The solution weakens until only
a feeble fingerprint of this first scent
trembles half-imagined on the air.
That earliest essence what was it again?
You spend a lifetime trying to get it back.

Rachel Hadas
Indelible
Wesleyan University Press