your scar from breastbone to navel,
a trail that led nowhere, a place
to put my mouth when we had nothing
to say. I did love you
like a chance at flying, or a wish
I make and tell someone, erasing
its existence. I can’t call you back.
Your phone line
got cut when you didn’t pay,
and anyway you said you don’t want
to hurt anymore. Sometimes I miss you
like the tangled
thicket where I once played, the nightshade
strung like garland, those red berries
that said christmas and poison in every season,
how Dad had me cutting every vine
when I moved back home, gouging out
their roots, dragging down their beauty
in trails of red juice.
I haven’t forgotten the perfect agony
of that afternoon: the limbs
so bare and brown, like the photo I took of you
shirtless and shaving. I was the flash
in your mirror, the clot dripping
white from the end of your razor.