Me now in my blacks pouding the avenue with my ballet-slippered feet.
They lead me nowhere through the deluge –
-    A widow lost in the city; an out of place orphan on the page.
One swipe of the red-pencil and I am erased.
Love’s poem never did fit,
yet for you so much have I sacrificed –
    sanctus, sanctus, sanctus
as the bell swings heavy, somewhere in the city, another sits lost
calculating th wages of integer sin, he whispers to nobody,
    I’ll pay the price, I’ll pay the price.


There will be no-one at the end of the line;
the long way from here to there
space blank where you once stood; now only a vacancy it says
    “x marks the spot,”
How can I know without you as my compass. How to be?
Today my birthday, 11.53 p.m. – seven minutes to the big Hurrah.
What’s to celebrate anyway. Just lay the facts bare; the post-mortem.
So much have I lost. How to begin to tell you of this indefatigable grief.
All those years of such measured façade -
so cautiously I measured – let you in bit by bit,
my brick hajib I broke through and for you only.
You see, I thought and when you clearly wrote…
When you shared the in-love with me, I believed.
I did not know we were playing make-pretend.