Memento

Let me remind you for in memory is hidden both fear and joy. I turned the key not knowing where the door led but aware somehow it was part of my past in the tumbled ruination of this bomb blasted house.
The fluorescent light half hanging to the ceiling swayed and crackled casting flickering shadows down a flight of concrete stairs that led down, down into darkness where the low drip drip of water spoke of imprisonment in chill rooms.
Suddenly memories tumble like water from a spring. The whine of the air raid siren, the exultant panic of rush and race to be safe to get away from the explosions, the cacophony of falling armament, the splintering of glass, the cascading of brick and soil and life into raw terror.
The hanging light suddenly bangs into darkness sending a flurry of sparks down the stairs and I am exhumed from the memory and smell the scent of newly burst blossom from a tree which once stood in my garden but now stands alone, sentinel within the devastation of this broken blasted landscape I once called home.
And I am without weight or presence wandering freely about the scattered walls picking through the remains of what I once called belongings. A willow patterned plate, a photograph, a set of keys and then I come across a leg beneath a flattened table and lifting the wooden plank now find it in the occupation of a coffin lid, for there lies the body of a soul who had no time to make for the key, the door, the light or the steps to the safety of the shelter.
One poor soul who now transcends time and exists momentarily as a corpse. I go a little closer and see the face, my face, my body.
I am memory upon the wind.
I am the scent of blossom from the solitary tree,