Requiem: I never read you Galliano

on a day
when our days
are gone
and
the sheets
are
healed of sweat
and no one
cries
in tears
or suffers
the inferno
of silence

after forgiveness
when we are
hollowed
to emptiness

long after pleasure
and hurt
become embers
burning
in a distant fire

long after the shapes
of our bodies
have shifted
and our lives
have spun other
stories

you will remember
me
as the woman
who read you poems

and i
will remember you
as the man
who heard them.