Let's Make a Pact on Remembrance
by Karen L. George
I dream of our last home together before your death. It’s winter. I need to get those quilts, you say, enter the fireplace that winds to attic rooms. Through the aperture you pass me seven antique hand-pieced and stitched blankets: honeycomb, bear paw, crown of thorns patterns. We burrow beneath their rich, clear colors—turquoise of the sea, yellow of lemon peel, violet that mirrors your eyes and lips.
Where did these come from? I ask. You can’t remember. It was so long since I walked on that side. I kiss your lips, cold from your journey back.
I wake to the taste of blueberries, your voice pleading, Let's make a pact on remembrance.
Karen L. George is author of five chapbooks, most recently an ekphrastic collaborative chapbook, Frame and Mount the Sky (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and two poetry collections from Dos Madres Press: Swim Your Way Back (2014) and A Map and One Year (2018. She received grants from Kentucky Foundation for Women and Kentucky Arts Council, and her work has appeared in South Dakota Review, Louisville Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Adirondack Review. She reviews poetry and interview poets at Poetry Matters and is co-founder and fiction editor of the online journal, Waypoints.
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