The Kite

 Friday Writings #15: "After" Another

“...re-read a favourite piece of writing, which may be poetry or prose, allow yourself to be inspired by it and share the results with us. We would also like to know, please, ‘after’ whom, or ‘after reading’ what – even if you are working in prose...”*

 

You’ve slipped from my memory

like a kite with a broken string,

     I was left holding on to nothing.

 

I watched as the kite

rose higher,

higher,

higher still.

 

Growing ever

smaller,

smaller,

smaller yet.

 

A speck of coral,

fading into the vast summer sky,

     until even that was gone.

 

If I squint my eyes just so,

I imagine I can see you still.

 

But, like the kite,

     your memory is just out of reach.

©2022 Lisa Smith Nelson. All Rights Reserved

* Inspired by A Christmas Memory, by Truman Capote.  I've referred to this short story in the past, and probably will refer to it again.  My favorite passage is at the end, when the story moves into the current day of the narrator. SPOILER!   The last paragraph, in part, reads, "...severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string.  That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky.  As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven." 

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