I don’t remember
why I bought it. A straw hat.
I painted myself
wearing it: young, jaunty, full
of optimism. Moving

on to other dreams
beyond the unrealized,
I lost that self. My
self in that moment, that hat,
in that portrait. Who I was.

And now I draw on
memory. An inexact
rendering of time,
the intersection of lines
reaching forward and then back.

Artwork and poem published online by Silver Birch Press