My mind does not sleep through the night, the questions
have their before and after. This is the
after. I ask again if he was ever really here at all,
this is June
this is very nearly July
and I am colder now than I was last December on his
breath, that I could see wiggling
wanting to escape into me as a pillow would into a case.

My mind is full of his absence,
I think it grows every morning I wake up without
a moat of our bodies cut into my bed. We were only just
children playing house
without the need for plastic appliances and plates,
made linen from hair lockets, leave

seed marks on his skin. I ask again if it still remains
touched like an early ripened strawberry.
That was December,
was supposed to be, but I cannot trust a memory of my
head resting against the fabric of anyone’s jeans
because then it may be true
that he really loved me after all, and maybe he does still.