We were together
in the only room with stove
I lay on the couch
reading a beat-up paperback
copy of “Clan of the Cave Bear”
and you…I don’t remember.
Cold winter up north
in an adobe house
that wasn’t ours
I was, supposedly, writing a novel
eternally unfinished. And its title
had something to do with ravens…
We did nothing.
It snowed. We fed the horses.
We were preparing
for an actual life: you’d shave your head
take a Dharma name.
I’d have a baby.
Less than a decade later
you were dead
almost still young enough
to be called young
and certainly transparent enough
to be called gone.
