The poetry just didn't want to seem to come today. Instead, these words inspired the beginning of a story. Maybe someday I'll write the rest of it:
Inside the antique store, Merlin moved from object to object, holding it, stroking it, scrutinizing it, even smelling it, hoping to glean some new piece of information. In this tedious way he hoped to educate himself bit by bit about the stories of past loves and catastrophes that each piece held in silence, some sliver of insight or intuition to illuminate the tales of those long gone.
He came finally to a locket, a silver heart dangling from a thin and tarnished chain. Thetinyhinge squeaked like antiny mouse as he opened it and peered inside. There, two faces — one strange, one familiar — peered back out at him in black and white: a man and a woman embracing. The man was totally foreign to Merlin, but something about the woman . . . the slant of the nose, the arch of the eyebrows, the curve of the chin. . .
He stared and squinted until his eyes crossed, then raised his head from the trinket. Across the room, the same face stared back at him from an antique mirror.
His eyes wide, his heart pounding, he looked again at the open locket holding a couple in eternal embrace.
Could it be? Could this be his mother, who had died on the delivery table on his birth day? And could this man holding her so tenderly be his father?
Merlin paid the antiques dealer and pocketed the locket. After decades of digging up and dragging out the stories of strangers that history had forgotten, Merlin had finally stumbled upon the story of a lifetime. Of his lifetime. Of his life.