Parting Song

BY JILL ALEXANDER ESSBAUM

First 
it is one day without you. 

Then two. 
And soon, 

our point: moot
And our solution, diluted. 

And our class action (if ever was) 
is no longer suited. 

Wherewith I give to looting through 
the war chest of our past 

like a wily Anne Bonny 
who snatches at plunder or graft. 

But the wreck of that ransack, 
that strongbox, our splintering coffer, 

the claptrap bastard 
of the best we had to offer, 

is sog-soaked and clammy, 
empty but for sand. 

Like the knuckle-white cup 
of my urgent, ghastly hands 

in which nothing but 
the ghost of love is held. 

Damn it to hell.

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