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Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. Leonard Cohen

Monday, May 9, 2011

Sugar

Playing dress-up
With Nana's jewelery
When I was a kid
Rooting through dresser drawers
For baubles and trinkets
To pose in front of her gilded mirror

Tucked away
Under some handkerchiefs and scarves
And the ever present scented soap
I spy an old shoebox
A treasure too tempting for little hands
Not to open

Inside I find
Not money
Or jewels
Or even boring, old letters
But packets of sugar
Probably hundreds of them
Like the kind they have at restaurants

I run to Nana
Giggling
Ask why do you have a bunch of sugar 
In a box
In your dresser?
I don't remember exactly what she said
But it was something like