Letting you go seemed the hardest thing:
hard, because you haven’t been here –
seemed, a mix of what fleeted then haunted 
when fixated, with dreams that appear.

That mixture of what was here 
and what had gone before,
poised us 
perfectly wrong.

The reverberation and the mis-lip read well. 
It drew the most exquisite pain.
‘Could have’ hurts so much more than ‘did’.
Half a century had already flung off its lid,
and I yet with artistry and verse to burgle and gain.

And in the indulgence of reworking, I built a great mythology –
a romance, barely, produced a whole anthology.

And so the kindest thing to do, for both of us,
even just in song –
“You have to let it go.”
“I’ve met someone I like, so…”

It seemed the hardest thing.
It’s why crows croak in the field instead of sing.
Tears choke up their beaks and then
the wet page is torn through by the chimera pen.

I still fear your face,
but at last, it would not hurt
to acknowledge other touch.
Not our beeswax, all along,
but what’s appropriate or fair
is not what rhymes or makes the song.

So see you, maybe, if you’ve a use,
in spring and summer of another life,
where, with minds free from fear and childhood’s abuse,
I am your man, and you are my wife.