Poetry Jay Jacobs

Night has fallen on the mountain, enveloping the little cabin in the woods in a quiet shroud of palpable darkness, and frigid, forced seclusion. The doors and windows are tightly shut to stave off the cold autumn draughts that seek out cracks in the floor and walls like probing anteater tongues to suck out the radiant heat. On the couch, a man sits looking at a postcard, remembering. Memories are jogged, recalled and dusted off, the best ones shined and placed within a secret box kept close to his heart. The most cherished ones are reserved for his wife and sweetheart of fifty years, who left him this very day one year ago. Sleepy now, his reverie is interrupted by a watery ripple in the air, and the feeling that someone is in the room with him. Suddenly he feels a hand in his, unmistakably feminine, with a woman’s soft, gentle warmth, strikingly familiar. The touch so casual as to be almost mundane lingers, moving slow as clock hands. Instantly he is given to understand that for the sake of love, a bridge of mercy was created for a lonely spirit to cross. His heart swells to bursting, too small to contain his overflowing emotions. Stay he implores, don’t leave me again. But such things, he knows, may not endure, and as fingertips draw farther apart he senses a farewell, then one final touch before the forever goodbye.

By Jay Jacobs