MOMENTO MORI

 Memento mori.

Remember that you must die.

The orange peel

left curling on the kitchen table.

The old man

feeding pigeons

outside the railway station

as though he had all afternoon.

A cup of tea

cooling beside an unopened book.

Your mother's voice

calling you from another room

and you answering,

“Coming,”

though you are not.

A shirt

still hanging behind the door

because no one has needed

to move it yet.

The photograph

you almost threw away

because you thought

there would always be another.

Memento mori.

The light changes

on the wall.

Someone laughs

in the next apartment.

A train leaves

without you.

The blue candle slowly sleeps. 

And somewhere

a child is learning

the word for forever.

You know better now.

There is no forever.

There is only

this orange peel,

this afternoon,

this hand reaching

for another hand

before it disappears.

Memento mori.

Remember.

Not the dying.

The having been here.

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