Time Traveler

Washing dishes, I notice a soap bubble rise:
tiny time machine carrying my heart
back to your childhood,
the day we stood at this sink
overloaded with Joy,
the blizzard of bubbles I created
to divert your sad six-year-old soul
stuck like a copper wire between
the positive and negative poles
of parents with nothing else to connect them

"This is heaven," you giggled as I manufactured
a mountain of translucent spheres
their rainbow surface a promising road
away from the pain of your present

Had we read those floating rounds like crystal balls
could they have transported us twenty years ahead
to now, the independent woman you've become,
(no longer the link between two who
floated away from each other after
their bubble of illusion burst)
to me, standing in that same kitchen
traveling time by memory 
as fragile as soap bubbles
to be with you again?

Arlene Gay Levine
First Published in Valley Voices: A Literary Review
Volume 24 Fall 2024 Mississippi Valley State University