Taking nothing with you
leaving nothing behind
I find only your scent
Floating unbounded
without your breath of spirit
to hold its bouquet —
it passes through me now
while still it lingers
Holding on while letting go
is never easy
Holding on while letting go
is breathing out while breathing in
is water slipping through fingers
is loving with your eyes wide shut
and your heart slit open
Flowers
cut down in their prime
lose the earth
only to return to it once more
while women with parched lips
still chant the names of rivers
and other beds gone dry.
Every day
I gather at the river–
river of tears
river of refuse
river of dreams
Every day
I kneel in the banks of my memory
making large withdrawals
from smaller deposits
of dwindling return
Today
the darkness flows within me
and without me
Tomorrow
I will gather and be gathered
Each experience
but yet another flower
for the vase
© 2019, Antonia Alexandra Kilmenko
ANTONIA ALEXANDRA KILMENKO is a former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion and widely widely published. Her work has appeared in (among others) XXI Century World Literature (in which she represents France) and Maintenant : Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She is the recipient of two grants: one from Poets in Need, of which Michael (100 Thousand Poets for Change) Rothenberg is a co-founder; the second—the 2018 Generosity Award bestowed on her by Kathleen Spivack and Josheph Murray for her outstanding service to international writers through SpokenWord Paris where she is Writer/ Poet in Residence.
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