I have:

a letter from you. It is typed,

in Times New Roman, font 12.

Your way of saying goodbye.

I never got to say anything back.

Face to face,

we only knew how to laugh

at each other. No point in being serious,

it can’t be serious.

I read it once and never again

because I know exactly what you mean

when you say it’s like leaping back into a hedge of thorns.

Once the good has been interred into my bones,

there’s no point in picking at the scars,

revisiting the places where the blood blooms

and halls reverberate with the laughs of little ghosts.

The rest of it

is white and clinical.

I may be too cynical

but I don’t regret

the choice made after a glance at the test results.

Neither of us wanted a remnant

of the thing we’d created.

Whatever is between us is fundamentally dead.

I won’t be hysterical,

and besides, it’s all spelt out

in even little formatted writing.

A farewell, perfectly legible,

stamped, or stomped, into once-pristine paper

that gives birth to nothing, lives for nothing,

and never smudged.

Though it came with a corner crumpled,

and perhaps that’s enough.