Parting Song
–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.

Photo by Marcial Bollinger on Unsplash