Bio
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, New English Review and Tenth Muse. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Amazing Stories and River and South.
Trigger Warning
She’s the last one alive who remembers.
Her hair is grey and shining.
And her skin is barely wrinkled,
a rose-pink that’s also petal-soft.
She gets around with help of a walker
but her mind requires no assistance.
She remembers. And her lilting voice
speaks of long ago as if it’s happening now.
Photographs can’t take me back in time
but she can.
And my own recall stops somewhere
in the middle of my first school year.
With her assistance, I can work my
way back from there,
down branches of the family tree,
right to those outer layers of the trunk.
Thanks to her memory,
I’ve added some history to mine.
When her tongue finally goes mute,
the stories will still resonate.
I will be the one who remembers
that she remembered.