Choosing exile is choosing to be the message

In a bottle, floating in seas but not 

Of them, opaque vessel wrapping a vestige

Of some former life, curled up snapshots

And scenes spooled in memory, old habits-

You wake for a moment in then, not now,

Just fragments. You are your frame, those brackets 

Of instance, place and custom, how

The air smelled then, now; this sky’s tint-

That lucid air, this dense color hemming-

The way hips swing, here, there, forgotten fruit-

And faces known,  folded away, remembering

Features silted by years, should we meet someday

Again, that world in mind will be yet further away.