hide and seek

I look for her in midnight stars, on moonlight beams,
In lazy afternoons and blazing twilights,
In the melody of singing larks and gurgling streams,
In the deep, heavy silence of the mountains

I seek her in colourful marbles and seashells by the shore,
In the sand castles she once built with her tiny hands,
In the fairy tales she read and the stories she wrote,
In all the secret places she imagined and discovered,
In another world, in another lifetime

I look for her in memories past
My own and of all those who knew her then
Those who remember her childhood pranks and mischiefs

Like a whirlwind, everything transformed by her touch
The pitter-patter of her tiny feet
Naughty handprints now fading on the wall

I flip through the black and white photographs in family albums
Memories glued together in chronological order
But everyone remembers her in their own different ways

Sometimes I see her in my thoughts and my dreams
But I remember her differently too
Once proud like the flames leaping skywards
Now like the dying embers of a festive bonfire
The little girl I once used to be
But have long ago lost somewhere inside of me