First in ages

TRICK

Worst trick of memory is to conflate
what happened with what should have might have been.
Mind edits – were her eyes that shade of green
or hazel, dark? She burned. It's far too late

to check these things. Run finger through the sweat
upon her arm in fever. Was I there?
The ash of Gauloise flaking in her hair
or was that merely time. Invent, forget,

and misremember – my mind does all three
and yet I know we loved. That is still true
dates brown and fall as leaves.Then they burn too.
If at the last she woke and thought of me

I cannot know. Our hot limbs intertwined
in sunlight in the past and in my mind.