echoes

Those days were sounds

Still present, fresh wounds

I tell myself they’ve healed

But here they lie unsealed:

Wind whistling through burdened trees

Floorboards creaking under careful feet

Liquid words fused with golden light

My darling heart, "Nichts bleibt."

Those days, never ending

Past and present blending

Still vibrating in my core

Softer now, yet stronger than before.

Summer's symphony of life

A bright and brutal knife.

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This sonnet is inspired by the Shakespearean or English sonnet but I have taken some liberties with the rhyme scheme and the iambic pentameter in an attempt to convey the often disorienting experience of remembering and trying to navigate the interplay between the here and now and the many “thens” we are so often transported back to.