The changeling

There are places that I return to and
each time
things have shifted
I walk paths familiar and run my hands along signposts
the places where I once hung my knowing
but
always
the light slants different and the recollecting softens
and I feel at once full and missing

It's been said that the act of remembering
changes things
changes the memory even
rewrites the code
and so
it becomes something altered
something different
than before

So I balk
because when I walk through the frames
I want them just the way they were caught
rough and unawares
true and alive
honest and proper
always
the
same

I want to wear the garments
of old
because some of them wrap round
just so
and I know and am known
just in the very wearing of them

But memory
it is a changeling
And when I slip into its fabric
there is a pinching
sometimes

That shifting that happens
however
it is also a kind of grace
really
For perhaps in the remembering
we can know our lives anew
We can know that
in all our joys and sorrows and wrong paths taken
and in all that has been or ever will be
we are being made
new