The Gallery

You don’t know how beautiful
you are when the light touches
your eyes and the blue glimmer
shines like diamonds when the sun
caresses the ocean.

Studying you behind this glassed exhibit--
inside an old museum filled with lost relics
from our past--a crack runs down
the middle of our walls,
leaving shards, bittersweet fragments
of what we once were.

I then turn towards the western hall
and walk into the living room and see
the map of our first year together,
next to it the Atlantic City photo,
adjacent to the stuffed animals
that witnessed our wins and losses.

These paintings shout at me,
throwing their images at my face,
the kinds of things we all wish to
forget but clutch closely to our hearts.

I search for the exit but I’m overwhelmed
by the memories that run me backward.
I hear the echos of our laughter vibrate
through the endless hallway,
until it fades into the suffocating air,
and I’m faced with a locked chamber

where remnants of our joy are sealed
where no one else will ever be allowed to be--
your own private wing.