The Journal at the Bottom of the Box

—pressed violets awaken between us 

At the bottom of a cardboard box scented with mothballs and mildew

her fingers trace worn leather

and pause over a journal swollen by summers past.

Inside wait pages of love poems written in looping ink.

Between them pressed violets lie brittle as breath,

their purple dimmed to ash.

I lift one carefully and think how petals once opened to sun and rain and daring bees.

Lips forget what they have kissed.

In our bed we read the poems aloud,

trading the book like contraband light.

“My hand remembers the warmth of your sleeping thigh,” the poet writes.

I touch her mouth and promise memory will not fade.

The old ink stirs again between us

as if breath could resurrect the vanished author

and press her longing into our present pulse tonight softly.

Her silence flowers against my bare listening skin.

In shared light.