RogueAgent

It wasn’t sudden—
It’d be wrong to say it was

Over the course of four years,
I started to forget what
it was like before and

toward the end, I could
only avert my eyes when
I saw her, run of blood
and rise of bone just visible
beneath delicate skin

that made me think of
teeth puncturing fruit

I thought:
If the girl is a stranger,
I can’t mourn her.

And:
This can’t possibly be
the same person.

The girl I knew took French,
traveled to Ireland, stayed
in the sun so long that her
scalp burned and came
away in the shape of
cottonwood seeds.

The girl I knew plucked weeds
from the bed of the river, had
ulnas & tibias formed from well water,
was born out of an abundance of
mesh & thorn—

First she existed, all torch light
& citronella, then she became
the field where the floodplain
used to be—

back to contents

prev
next