Miranda limps towards the light.
Age and a long-dead husband
in the rooms she leaves behind.
First music goes, then sight.
She gropes along, hand over hand
the invisible rope of infinite rewind.
Memory leads her to the hall
of windows, cool with the busy fall
of shadows, not fluttering but lapsing
back, like lovers weak from clasping.
Her father’s wands, his perilous books
once lined the stairwell’s rise.
He traded his queen for a pair of rooks.
His daughter stops, unveils her eyes.