Attic Boxes

Atop the cake for one day, it was packed

into a box where it lay for over sixty years,

its little tuxedo-clad groom’s thin smile

and dots of rouge on the bride’s cheeks faded,

the arch of plastic pink and white flowers crushed

into a lop-sided square, the white bow at the top

now wilted and flat, angling to one side

as I lift the relic gently from its tissue paper

and imagine my mother’s young eyes, as mine

are now, gazing upon such a sweet confection,

our hearts filling with wonder – hers of what was

yet to come, mine of all she would yet endure.