I once showed
the letters
of my heart
to a miscreant
(a *******)
then watched as he
jotted them down
on college lined paper;

he threw them to the wind like
brown candy wrappers.

(it was winter
we had not yet broken
grandma’s gravy boat)

A-Y landed on
empty ground, one letter
for each square foot
of naked topsoil.



I found Z in the Spring.
It had caught on a chain-link fence
and lost most of its color.