NO WORDS FOR THIS

If a true poem is one

you wish you never had

to write, then this is it.

Don’t read it just to say

you’ve read it.

That’s like

the traveler who went to Spain

so he could say he went

to Spain.

The words I’ve picked

have really picked themselves,

but what’s not written here

is where the poem breathes….

The mother of a captain killed

by snipers read his final

letter postmarked on the date

he died.

She read it often

after that.

And every time

she closed the envelope, she slowly

licked it shut so that her tongue

could taste him in the last

thing he ever touched.

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