I write your good-bye letter over the course of two days.
I started-over seven times—hunched, under the weight.
These worn pages and spilt ink, remember your name-
I hear it softly murmured among their rustling grain-
And as mine fades from the aged oak of your sprawling bed frame--
There is nothing left here for me.

My pen falls as the climbing-cry of cold morning comes,
With a quaking in my wrist, and sharp silence in my gums;
The patchwork quilt is half-hazard, and snaked across the floor-
Where your tremolos dreams had tossed it-the night before,
And only your body’s ghost-imprinted on the mattress-do I look for-
Because there is nothing here left for me.

It’d been fun, I suppose; like Peter and Wendy, infinite and young-
We’d drawn together and merged; then delighted, we had run-
From the duty of daily, the city-those mechanical ghosts scattered among,
And the curtains of riches-in the air, which we’d spun-
Had garnished all of our days; a honeyed veneer of ambient sun!

Yet severe as the prophets-or poor Noah in God’s storm-
In the corners voracious shadows gladly took form
With the slipping lines of your smilem, the lingering chill round the door-
Fall had swept in violent: laughter-dead then, was mercilessly tore-
From our wild-flower wind-pipes, that once inviolable, bore-
Proof of something here left for me.

Now aching, I crease the note crisply and vainly, do try,
Turning it caged, between frail-bird fingers, to descry-
The moment opulence burned, and from the ashes recast-
Mocking imitations: these edacious phantoms! Aghast!
Howbeit! Were we not unassailable then! United, so certain to last--?
Yet just silence, is here left for me.