"The Lost Handbag" by Elaine Smokewood read by Joanna Chenoweth
Channel: Remembering Dr. Elaine Smokewood, Poet and Teacher
Date: 28/10/2014

The Lost Handbag by Elaine Smokewood

I’ve lost my handbag somewhere at a party.
I sift through all the topcoats and umbrellas
Jumbled behind a row of folding chairs.
I know this scene from an old black-and-white photo:
It’s the spring of nineteen forty-eight.
It’s Mother’s senior prom.

When I was a girl looking at Mother’s photo,
I couldn’t remember the girl I looked at.
Her head was turned away from the camera:
Perhaps she was looking across the room 
At a girl as beautiful as a princess
Dressed in red and looking back at her.

In my dream, I find my father’s black umbrella.
I find my grandmother’s favorite cookie jar.
I will surely find my handbag in the library.
I sift through book after book on the topmost shelf.
There are no handbags jumbled among the bookshelves.
I climb down the ladder and notice my red dress.

A girl in a photo turns away to look
Beside herself, as though at a blankness, a zone 
Far below zero, too cold even for snow.
Her face is the face of a princess in a book
Who mourns her lover high in a locked tower.
All lost things lie in the space where that girl looks.