VINTAGE - Drew Kolenik

I’m sure the grapes I discarded
are well beyond raisins now--
I imagine as they shriveled and lost their form
somewhere, along the way,
the ridges and grooves of their witheredness
matched the contours of my brain.
Those folds holding old and new memories
                          sweeter
                                       than wine.
 
So, maybe too the grapes remember
the trips to New York before we ever moved
 
The smell of home I could never quite explain--
yet still transfixes me when it lands on my tongue
 
or the earliest dream I can still remember,
where everything appeared scribbled in crayon
 
I want to believe these fruit see today
with rose tinted lenses, and feel the beauty I cannot
 
And perhaps in their dying quicker
they lived quicker too.
Yes, in their  sweet dementia
they recall all the fragments I’ll one day cling to
sometime down the line--
 
maybe with rosy cheeks
the grapes remember a year comprised only of Augusts to Octobers
when life was full of lush
and unfiltered vigor.