black hair, blue smoke
curling up from your cigarette.
i don't remember what you said,
but it comes back to me,
the porch light and the porch railing
and the knowledge,
forceless yet infinite, rising, catching fire,
that it was done...
that that which i never had had
was gone.
then i was
excoriate.
now i look at
the wound
and wonder
whether to let it heal.
like words scored
into a tree's bark--an easy if inept metaphor--
your mark,
branded to my tongue:
veronica. veronica. veronica.