soli

now

you are

a photograph;

still hidden in the

pages of my journal—

the book I never wrote—

but opened again to look upon

your face or façade again. the breeze

is gone now and all I have are memories;

those remnants of better days, of different

times when Paris was too mundane for our tastes

when cheap wine and cigarettes could lead me to you

to Rio, to Cairo, to Michuacán, to places I can’t remember,

faces you’d still forget, swallowed up by a cloud of

dusk, musk, and silk-screened romance, stranded

sentiments in a world far too distant from my

own. all I knew was you, then, too real and

too sure, too much, too different, far too

soon to throw my life away for yours,

for anyone’s; instead you haunt me

in absentia, manic reducer of my

hope, darkling inundator of my

dreams, salacious avatar of

any goddess who would

have you; know that it

only hurts me when

I pray for the rains

to wash me clean

from the face of

that one final

photograph

memory

of you

and

me.