Front Covers

I have never once been something to someone and not meant it.
Too many people have sang about their worlds being shaken by love
for me to talk about the way you ran through my veins
and maintain a shred of originality.
Besides, you were one of those people, and your words are lost.
In the space between us,
they only carried out your true intentions and died at their wits end.

So I won’t.
One poem written for you in the front cover of a book
that I forgot to copy — my own words, lost as a gift in your hands
as they all were.
I imagine you casting out that page as I, too, burned your play in my kitchen sink.
We are both artists.
You are an actor, and a good one, I believed you —
but I have never lied on paper.