The Good and the Gone

It was December when they left,

a noxious month in the midst of Indian summer.

The plains behind them mottled with dirt,

with the aftermath of war.

Her face occupied the back window, kisses

of ruin on alabaster skin, violet eyes the color of poison.

In January, her listless goodbyes danced through my veins, poison

that curdled affection. I looked to the left

of the horizon, hoping the dawn’s kisses

would precede her return. The warmth of summer

finally loosened its grip, another war

relinquished, and Jack Frost baked the dirt.

February passed like trinkets of dirt

through hourglass slots. We all drank poison.

We all sought questions to fermented answers. War

was a confidant, a comrade lost. I hid her letters under the left

pillow and counted her promises to return in summer.

At night, they abated phantom kisses.

March saw romance, kisses

of snow, sweet nothings from sky to dirt.

But it also saw new death, and I knew Summer

was another casualty. She sealed infrequent letters with poison.

Of our romance, was mine the only heart left?

With an adversary lost, what could replace the passion of war?

In April, ascending from earth, came the rot of war.

Stirred by spring, smoke and ash dropped empty kisses

on our heads. A golden circle weighed on my left

hand. Its presence had become as sacred as dirt,

and I understood the antidote to her poison.

Was this the impermanence of Summer?

In May, the slanted words of summer

rose to meet the dawn. Lettered nothings lit like war.

The coils of her writing blossomed; poison

evaporated. Kisses

spread across Lake Rainier, across the shore’s turbid dirt.

My ring skipped across the water and sank, where it was left.

It was June when I left, when I abandoned the fervor of summer.

There was no trail of dirt. The echoes of our war

were a distant memory, and the kisses of boot to asphalt renounced the last

drops of poison.