the last love letter I wrote you

there were broken rosary beads

piled and folded into

the last love letter I wrote you—

and a pale silver pendant

with a face of ivory—

a fearsomely tranquil woman

taken for mad by admirers

half the time—the clasp

on the necklace broken too

in the last love letter I wrote you—

there were marks from my unclean fingers

etched like wan waypoints into

the last love letter I wrote you—

and addendums in the dog-ears,

your favourite English numbers

frozen in mathematical quietude

in the last love letter I wrote you—

there were nine apologies,

crescendos, mountainous, moot

in the last love letter I wrote you—

and twelve glib repeats

of your name, Audrey—

clumsy invocations to look

at what you as happening

had reduced me to

in the last love letter I wrote you—

there was forest of blade edges

every word another split-off saw tooth

glued back together so artfully

that it is painful now to admit

that I felt nothing, thought nothing,

while writing it all to you.