NOTHING TO ME

You told me once that it's your habit
to gather the left behind stuff
of your ex-lovers in a box.
And you return the box
with those things once precious,
now merely trinkets, as a sign
of your disinterest, this last
giving that says "They mean
nothing to me and neither do you".

I expected The Box. I received
a crumpled brown grocery sack.
No love letters, no photographs,
none of the simple gifts, like stones
or herbs or flowers, that we favored.
I emptied the sack on the table
and there were only these:
a long sage-green robe of Egyptian cotton,
where you taught me how to sew buttons,
that I wore as we sipped our morning tea.
And this brace of white tail deer antlers
you made into yard art over the garden gate,
gnawed by the squirrels that danced
like stoned acrobats along the back wall.

There was a time not long ago
I wanted nothing more back except you.
But this little break up package
will do. I have my own ceremony.
I will don dishdasha and horns,
become deer spirit, quiet, fast
and ghostly. I will dance around
a blazing fire and let the Flame
die down and down until even
the glowing coals, that purest of heat
we once held between us,
become gray ash and blow away.


© 2006 by Richard W. Todd

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