haibun || Sheila E. Murphy

He learns to have apologized. She has taught him to atone for her mis-takes.
He writes a text he seeks to have erased. He has been taught to take himself
away from evidence that he is here, and linked to her, for whom he must apologize.
There are not words enough. She commands that he remove himself, part of herself.
She directs that he apologize. She likens him to what she will not be. She reads
the mirror in translation. She leaves herself sequestered, as he drives the crowd
out of her eyes. She likes the shadows as the wake he leaves her for. She hears
the cinders crush when he arrives. The drive would not be smooth. Her eyesight
takes in darkness. He endures what seems in part safe. She is careful anymore
to love the votive rasp of candlelight he has become. Before the light has dried.

Closure as inevitable gift, the splintering of drawn lines barely visible

Sheila E. Murphy