Apples are hard to eat now.
Bread too and other things
aggravate the throat.
But loss no longer devastates;

imperfections no longer force me
into cessation—
breath, existence, love.
I could try again.
Loss no longer floors me.
Suffused with so much grief,
time brings turning
& often material things.
the locket hanging back on the mantle
front and center.  I don’t
have the letters but my head
without caffeine remembers and
time brings
maturation.

What I’ve always needed:

the deepest place I can go is
completely still.
Still, you don’t mean a thing to me,
nothing means a thing to me.
When I speak, its merely compulsion
to expel whatever memory of feeling
lingers.
And love?

I want this thing gone.