Matthew Caretti

Thessaloniki Airport, 1994

In the bathroom. Alone. Just a face in the mirror. Sun-bronzed. Hair long and loose, summer blond. Youth in full bloom. To whom do those blue eyes belong?

Blue the color of the Aegean Sea. I plunge again and again into those cool waters from sharp-shafted cliffs. Wild nights then lapse into a soft dawn on the beach, still in her arms.

One last dive. She beckons from the water below, yet I turn away. Squint past the crown of late day sun to the grand monastery on the ridge above. Shake my head at its insistence.

In the bathroom. Alone. I shake my head again. Refuse my own reflection. The memory of sun and sea and salt. Even her skin. So much dust on the mirror.

sand in my hair
shaking out the debris
of some past life