Birthday Presents as Red as Thread

When I wrap and pack
the birthday presents that I will
then take to the post office,
I’m struck
with the fact that you are soon to be thirteen.

And I stop to remember myself then too,
back through time,
unraveling the years,
like shedding clothes
as one walks through their house

and it all comes undone this way.
And for a moment I can see myself
as I once was
holding the necklace that your mother
now dead
gave to me.

I imaging giving it to you.
The sentiment. The power.
Entrusting you with the only thing I have of hers.
It would be a sort of un-doing. Severing the lingering red thread.

I cannot think of love as a constant.
It must, for me, wax and wane,
the way a wave comes to the shore but is still always part of the deep.

I have to think of it this way – as something I can touch
once or twice but not hold. Otherwise
I can feel my fingers locking
and I know I will choke it to death.