What am I if not a sigh – blate.
A brief exhalation that pares the soft half-closed barrier of your lips.
I am the ever steady silence;
the fill the space where I once was; me your hungry ghost.
Once a dialect – now spoken in ellipses…
at the end of every dot a thought,
that I, that you, that we knew what was what;
that in the space there was meaning,
dot dot dot. We knew sous-silence, tacit & understood.
You wrote, “I missed you.” I missed you too.
I never wanted to, but I did.
These days you just miss – there is no want.
For you I no longer exist.
Some inexplicable change. You leave me a gamine orphan.
The pale green-eyed widow, dark in the back corner.
Do you comfort yourself? A refusal of hurt.
Do you really believe I find some clear recognition
in the moss-green and black flecks of your eyes?
That every single thing I gave, you tossed aside.
I could never discard, do that, to you.
Why I even kept the tucked ribbon-tied about your ring.
My hurt is not your problem.
You never claimed any of this had meaning. It was I –
the ictal idiot, your one true Believer,
imbibing every object with such significance
as you meant something – but then I…
So stupid me: she of faith, love, hope,
all of the Platonic virtues – believing you felt them too.

So this explains my token gifts, tissue wrapped and bound with my hair ribbon.
In all I gave you pieces of me.
Once you told me, “I am the same with others,”
You told me, “None of this meant anything”
But more, you told me we were we – me you.
"More than simple friends, this transcends."
Today you leave me only questions.
You take away the sweetness. Draw a red-line through the past.
You take away the then. You leave me alone in the Now.