Guest post today from my dear friend Sunny. Enjoy!

Nostalgia came knocking today,

completely unexpected,

standing at my door.

“It’s been ages,”

she says softly

as I beckon her in.

We sit in the living room,

silent for awhile

as awkwardness seeps out

of the intervening years.

But slowly we warm to each other,

and she opens her suitcase on the sofa and says,

“There is something in here I would like you to see.”

I edge closer to peek

and am ushered back

to a place scented with baked apples and cinnamon.

To warm colours and soft light from corner lamps.

There’s laughter and heavy patchwork quilts,

and quiet joy.

Outside,

the air is delightfully crisp and fragrant,

and the wind tosses the remaining leaves on swaying branches.

Down the road,

an avenue of maples,

resplendent in their dying,

and the leaping of my heart to see it.

It’s so beautiful, I ache.

But those doors are closed to me now,

those people unknown.

Life does that sometimes –

closes us off from one another.

The pain from that loss is long past.

How then do these memories,

so strong, so beautiful,

creep to haunt me of old happiness? 

When I look up,

Nostalgia is gone

and her suitcase with her,

but I can still smell the apples.