next poem >Andrea M. Lockett
Instead of a letter
You wrote to me at christmas
after all these silent years,
"I thought of you the other day,
tell me what you're doing, dear,"
then some smalltalk, nonsense notes-
already you must know I won't.
Look, I never think of you,
never wonder how you are,
could not, if I tried, recall
your scent, your sorrows, or your smile.
Now you invade my mind again,
and I resent you, little man.
Today I thought I'd mail a card,
addressed and signed without our names,
just initials and one line:
"G--don't ever write me--K."
Would it make you wonder why?
Would you ask the friends we shared?
Would you make me then explain
how I shivered when you neared,
how the goosebumps came on me,
not in love but in disgust;
how you never touched my heart,
how I'm glad we are apart.
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