Even your reappearance after so long
was a strange conumdrum. We met four times
that day. The obligatory hug. The singsong
of small talk. The cheerful masks and pantomimes.
We met in a place for soul connections. Here
we began and here came back. The altar remains.
Are we not candles, sometimes lit, my dear,
sometimes out? For love both waxes and wanes.
Avoiding my eyes, you sat opposite
in the class of twelve. Nothing was the same.
When things move on, there is no help for it.
You left me an empty picture frame.
How easy to end when there is no choice.
That night on the telephone-- another's voice.