Years I have carried that silver spoon
engraved in careful script with the word “Happy”.
I keep it in a silver butter-dish by my bedside;
a sacred object; a small piece of you.
Even this tarnishes, each day a little duller.
I remember those four hours – Gideon honey,
the spoon passing from my mouth to yours,
This as close as we could get then – our spit.
We both knew it – commingling,
some small thrill this, sweet in the moment.
Who knew you’d pull an about face –
take back years of we.
Did I ever exist for you?
Am I a thought that occurs?
I ought take that silver spoon, hold it with tongs over a blue-gas flame
watch as it melts, melts, melts.
That stupid happy word falling like so much gibberish.
That is all I would leave of that day.
You want I go away? So it is… So it shall be.
Watch this! For my next trick!
I will take all of your letters, your tokens and your gifts,
songs, marbled things such these I absorbed.
I will make of them great holocausts of which you’d never known the like.
I will do all of this with a Mona Lisa smile.