poem31 May 2020 05:19 pm
![](http://www.polutexni.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/529px-Pablo_Picasso_1902-03_Femme_accroupie_Crouching_Woman_Woman_Sitting_with_Hood_oil_on_canvas_90_x_71_cm_Staatsgalerie_Stuttgart.jpg)
Jennifer Crow
I still had hope, in the brief bright nights before the faery mound opened and spat you out. It is possible to be patient with a memory, to sit quietly with that empty place in the room. Alone, I painted your image on my days, until the damned coughed you up again, blinking, into the world’s shining eye. What can I do now, with the tattered remnants of you? What can I do with a love that flutters like a broken-winged bird in a cage, unfit even for sacrifice? And for all that, I find I cannot release your empty shell, cannot leave it on a beach for someone else to find and cherish. I cover the mirror and sweep the wreckage of my old life to the door, but the crooked shadow you’ve become stretches a little longer every evening, and my own heart shrinks, a once healthy organ collapsing under the weight. If I could hold you, soul and body—if I could pull you from this living death . . . But you are no longer mine, even as you grind the last shreds of my hope beneath your heel, unthinking, your gaze fixed on a distant hill.
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