1883

Love is a cipher- 1,8,8,3
A detective case, a locked room mystery
(Keyboard under my fingertips, confessional words flow as the seasons revolve
As I write this song of suspense, it contains a secret message for you to solve
All the lines in brackets are clues and all the words have nostalgic hues)


So long ago, was it just a dream?
Was it a year or so it would seem
(Looking back at a love of long ago, “It isn’t time that’s passing us by, it’s you and I”)


Or did it denote the blue combination key
That would open the box of your memories in me
(The persistence of reminiscence, moist surreal branches dripping with poetry)


Was it the phone number of her mezzanine apartment?
The brownstone that burned to ruins when she went
(The boulevard is fading. The memory is decaying.
We’re hidden from each other’s eyes. So much sea! So much sky!
A home of hearts; A house of cards; A castle of sand
The address I can change with the wave of my hand)


Was it one of the left over cryptograms I used to like to make?
For she may no longer be there but the clues are there to take
(1 for A, F for 6, substitution matrix; melancholic prisms and linguistics)


Was it the suite number of the hotel room?
Where we swapped our solutions that afternoon?
(DNA, Marks of love, imprints of time and traces of longing-
Found upon the crime scene by the two sleuths later that evening)


Maybe 1883 was everything I never could find
A date, a code, a helpline, an address- a state of mind
(Some mysteries are better left unresolved. Some love stories are better left unrequited…
Everything has to rhyme and there has to be a mystery in every line
What then may the truth be? Once upon a time in 1883…. )

TO BE CONTINUED……