So we may find ourselves
Taking on other people’s memories
Slipping on the mantle of their lives
Until they become part of us
And walk where we walk,
Second-hand shadows,
Like the memory
of my husband’s memory,
when we went back,
of that fastidious courteous man
who dealt in heirlooms and timepieces
with an eye for the piece out of place
so perhaps
I was primed to be affected
but anyway
when we pushed open the glass door
there we were face-to-face
with where he was no longer
in black-and-crimson spot-lit décor
and the practised smile of a well-heeled lady
asking whether she could help us
and while my husband, gesturing,
was getting into a laborious explanation
of the who and why and when
of our presence
I felt the clasp of the present loosen
and the facets of someone else’s past
in a silent clamouring for attention
press themselves in around us
and gestured him in turn
to be silent and take in our surrounds:
the padded trays and cabinets
of rings and bangles, chains and chokers
of lockets and brooches and beads
the sheen and the gleam
of gold against cream
amid gemstones on cushions of velvet
and in my husband’s eyes
a kind of desperation
until I saw him see, off to the right,
the curl of the old wrought-iron staircase
up to what used to be the working area
where repairs used to be carried out
how many used to be’s
where my husband’s grandfather, the jeweller
used to work.