For some reason I felt compelled to share with others, strangers I guess, I never met them.
Strangers then. Compelled to share with them you. To prove to people who never knew us that I loved you. That we were lovers.
I wonder if I harp on that word too often. Bet I do.

I do.

I connected the misery of your loss into The Antlers - Hospice.
In some cowardly preoccupation with signaling the virtues of  a luminous man I pretended in due process. Much of me as you must understand.

You were a woman and a girl.
And I forced myself under to suffer in some actual mourning.
So a world built on my word.
My hands need rest.
My mind needs rest.
I want to stop.

I'd swallow a breathful of Plath-itudes.
If it'd quieten the lore of some rolling hill of you.
Somewhere scrawled in a red oak desk,
Borders and plyings a mess.

I likened you to a spectre.
For a literal in lieu

Why can't I let up off myself.
Why won't I accept love.

You are the woman protagonist in a fiction
And only your performance merits applause.