This is just to say
when i gave you that poem
I had no inkling

Of what was to come -
all the pain awaiting us
The ancestral sin

Temptation, assured
We were manicured, shared prose
Dog-hungry for plums.

Your ambivalence
unlike her riddle in nine
syllables, is clear.

retrograde motion
take a pause, a backward step
it's all illusion

We are what we hide
in our stomachs, in our hearts
this gordian knot

Ouch, my finger hurts.
Distant, unamused eyes say,
“Who cares?” Parent fail.

You were there then ****
Thoughts of you evaporate.
Please don't stay in touch.

The little white lies
And radical honesty
I don't wanna know