Once again in a room ever touched by your absence
as all rooms seem to be 'neath this part of the sky –
Eastern Europe with its grain of communist air and no silver lining
brushes through my lashes like a hot puff open eyes cannot stand
as I construct your Brit moves, your Brit smile,
much as a fly buzzing slower and softer
in a spider’s home, workplace, lie.

I'm writing to find you alive, happy even,
mouth as dry as the heart of a desert at noon –
all that London rain I fancy flowing
down your sculpted cheekbones and neckline
like the tracks of the tube
now gathers in rusty tin buckets with holes for the eyes,
like a criminal's pantyhose pulled in a hurry over his face,
that becomes at times yours and more often mine.

Your pale face and hair make you no paler
at heart, though wrinkled no doubt –
it's absence and distance that account for the illusion of time
immersed 'tween our hands
when we ran with a child’s laughter one night
down a steep and slippery flight of stairs
I don't recall climbing back.

Sometimes no sign from you is the greatest of all
and it fits these hollow moments
like a glove with no tips –
we left ours stuck in that midnight instant
in a half-dead city my walk can't revive.
No one knows of you anymore and you're missed
like a cunning slumber had fled with you in its arms.
You're the newborn I failed to touch when he had his first cry
and it feels like you hadn't left really
and nothing has changed.


Yours, Lee Ann


P.S. Has it all been the same? May I take a stand?
Write back in your mind.
My carrier pigeons will feed off your thoughts
and breed mine.