What It Was

   
I have the taste of you
inside of me
and we keep talking
like we ever shall be able
to say
it is just the same
today, as it has always been,
forsooth.

But the truth is…
I want
to pull
it out;
that taste on my tongue
that seems only so wrong
as the instance it was
almost right. And so
I give you now
just one
more night of bitter lemons,
for it is surely only
the bells
of St. Helen’s church
that chime
their death knoll
for us;

and so we whisper loudly across the bay:
“Only let it be
what it was.”