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.

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

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

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