A million years ago, we met. It was Wednesday.
The night sky contracts, smoker's cough,
summer's end. A wheeze, a splutter,

while I am inside, the pink lamp on. I think
of the last letter you wrote me and how
it never arrived, and how it never arrived,

and how I felt leaden inside that whole
sticky summer. I was leaden, my guts
were cast in lead. I am searching

for a thing called American Sadness,
said the little girl to the bullfrog.
A quick curtsey, a long drown in the lake.

I like to think I am a different person now,
moorless and silent when I need to be.
I like to think a great many things.