Why dear, I ask her.
In my mind, somebody fallen in love
Has been jilted.
But things are simpler.

‘Her parents had strange diseases…..'
That baffles me.

I think of AIDS, of nothing in particular,
But drift to the silent body
Of a young girl, and her puberty,
Laid among the freshly done roses.

Don't lose focus dear, I tell her,
And end the conversation with a telephone kiss.

Back in my mind, a young girl,
The poison she ran to,
Lips gone cold, on thresholds of beauty,
And a mind cut inside salted flesh,
Baked in sprouting alphabets of love.