On my way from you,
taking the last trip down your steps,
I slipped on ice we'd watched freeze from sheets of sleet,
from sheets of jersey cotton.

I caught myself,
but not before thinking back to that fall evening,
to the warm rain that oiled the top of the stairs across town;
back to when, on my way to you,
I left him
and lost my footing.

Grace aside, these moments
parallel in a way that fissured not bone,
but my psyche--
defining at once
this new she who sought one,
despite she who belonged to another.

Oh, the things she did say,
this foreign half of me,
as, descending your crystal-coated staircase,
she heard herself, for the last time, speak.

We had both fallen so in love with the sound of her voice.

On my way from you,
I caught myself,
and let her, broken, fall.