Water seeps in

My wooden doors start to swell and bulge

But my heart stays at rest

I never thought

My sister’s old house

Would be this problematic

She never was.

Trudging through

This slow-rising disaster

I try to find a sealant

Chaulk, mortar, anything.

And that’s when I notice

A small trunk tucked away

Rain hits like bullets

On the glass windows

Pelting my only outer shell

But I forget about it

And open up the trunk.

Inside, mementos

Of a simpler time

We were just kids.

Pictures in plain wooden frames

Old schoolwork

And art attached to blue ribbons

Yearbooks from long ago

When women still had to wear skirts.

And then, something screams at me

Despite how crippled and broken down it looks.

A piece of paper

Withered and decaying

Perhaps by age

Or an incident with water

Nevertheless,

The top reads only one word:

_Donovan._

__

__

Donovan.

The man she never got to say “I love you” to

Twenty-five years ago

She could never muster up the courage

And that’s when the reaper came.

So she became a ghost, too.

Hidden away from this cruel world.

But this song says something different.

She talks about how she misses the days

Where she was carefree,

And how she would join him soon.

The date on the paper is only five years ago.

That’s about the time the tumor bloomed.

I shut the trunk and hug this precious song to my chest.

I put the trunk on the wagon, but I have to hold onto this one small, insignificant piece of paper.

Of course something my sister wrote was beautiful.

She always was.