She folds the white linen into a tidy square.
Her face is composed and deceptively serene,
the movements sure and economical
in their quietly practiced efficiency.

Such an old fashioned gesture of gallantry
offered thoughtlessly yet sincerely
at an inopportune parting of ways,
with not a backward glance from the giver.

She smoothes the worn edges lovingly
and places the handkerchief in the drawer,
nestled with her most intimate things
beneath a stack of modest lace-edged briefs.

There is the feel of ceremonial ritual,
a silent witchcraft performed countless times,
designed to secretly preserve and protect
the essence of what should have been.

But the familiar scent fades from the cloth,
and the comfort it affords in the dark journeys of night
clutched in her hand, pressed to her damp cheek,
becomes ever more elusive and fleeting.

Until one morning she cannot find this talisman
amongst the tossed and rumpled bed-sheets,
and searches frantically and breathlessly,
only abandoning the effort in order to dress for work.

It is then that she lifts the last pair of panties
from the bottom of her sacrosanct drawer,
and sees that she has not lost her memento after all,
but has instead been seduced by the sly sorcery of time.