The Jilted Lover Speaks

If I loved you in a forest 
And no one heard me 
not even you 

Was it real? 

Was it real like 
timeandspace-- 

A quantum suggestion, 
Nature's mild mantra? 


I steer my Scrabble tiles around the board 
until they say all my real words, 


Tell the long story of how we met and 
the smell of your damp sweater sleeve 
rising and falling, growing hot and cold 
on my shoulder. 


But you leave before the game is over 
And now no one can win or lose. 

All these words splinter into nameless neutered toy letters, 
tumble down the slick sides of a bended board, 
slink back into their velvet pouch, 
back into the cardboard coffin, 
up on a shelf in the closet where no one will look. 

Certainly not you. 


Was it real? 
Did it take up time and space 
Cast a bright shadow 
Ripple through still ponds of nothing? 

Some government agency must 
retain a copy of 
the birth certificate of my love 

Smashed sloppily in a weary file folder, 
Time and date crusted over by the passage of too much time and 
too many dates. 

What? No witness signature? But that's just it. 


Let it go, they say. Move on. 
But where does old love go to die? 
Does it wither in spurts, waxing feisty and manic, roaring demands at the racing wind? 
Or walk the lonely city streets, gradually fading among the younger faces until 
breath becomes vapor 
and footprints, 
dust.