The Life I Still Dream of Living

The Home I Long to Return to

was re-discovered
today in the pages torn
from Architectural Digest – glossy
photographs of room, after room, after room

and a Mediterranean
light through blue-white
curtains that swayed in the morning
breeze like Edelweiss or chiffon kites

blown onto the veranda
(also white and aged with salt water).
Bedroom, livingroom, kitchen, garden, bath,
photographs, patched together into a home, torn

from a magazine
during stolen moments
when we dreamed of the life we
wanted to live if we were not living

this life, with
only a trail of sweetpeas
and philodendron to remind us
of sea-green fantasies in the south

of France,
where lemons roll
in cobblestone streets
below lavender scented Alps,

while you
stack Caprese, fresh
basil always lazily in reach
from our rustic kitchen window.

Two glasses
of Bordeaux on granite
countertop, your bright camellia
lips, outside the photographer’s frame,

in the white space
for me to imagine: this house,
this life, this scrapbook of our future,
now sepia-toned with age and neglect,

these pages
of the house that never
lived, except for in our dreams,
these pages fold in on themselves today.