What is this last breathe,
like the song that was the first song she heard,
when,
crouched in the bushes she undid herself
for the book in her
hands,
and the boy in her soul, who is now many miles away,
who is now,
slipping himself into pages, into the fainter spots between
bleeding ink, almost like the ship-scars
over his wrists that she kissed;
over and inside the mouth that she wrote for him;
and under
the careful places on his lips where tears
come for retribution.
the last pavilion 