Keepsake
A poem for Wednesday
You make the coffee,
salted and milk-bright,
and we drink in the window
where last night
I told you of June
while eating red currants.
June, who peeled peaches
never lifting her knife
and called the trees by name.
Who told me I was pretty
when she could hardly speak.
Over whom the nurse wept
and said, I’m sorry,
I loved her. I tried
to make you know her.
We tried to share a life.
Now it’s morning
and I can see where I end
and you begin
like a shoreline
or a grave.
Remember the currants,
fragile as glass.
Their wet, bitter rush.
How lucky we were
to taste them, even once.
Even in hunger, how full.
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