Between The Snowflakes

Written for Reena’s Xploration Challenge,
where we are encouraged to wrap our heads
around the word ‘elusive’. Here’s my take.

She wears the old grace like a second skin,
white silk pressed against a whiter sky,
while snow erases everything that’s been
and leaves the question, who am I?

The hairpins hold what fingers cannot keep,
each knot a voice that says remember, stay –
yet something stirs beneath the beauty’s sleep,
a self as elusive as the light of day.

They dressed her in the map of where she’s from,
in blossoms stitched by a stranger’s hand.
She holds tradition’s weight and still feels numb
to all the ancient laws she cannot understand.

Is the lovely geisha’s tale the stuff of dreams,
a song we hear, a stirring tune we feel,
a whispered secret woven through life’s fragile seams,
or is it just what she is willing to reveal?

This is “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” by Sakamoto Ryuichi