I. Gone, gone, gone. Never forever? Never. It never happens that I hear his name and it does not sting. Stories of pictured places calling from relationships wed and un- echo and ring again and again. What was love keeps me living. never gone never II. I sleep on the wasteland in a desert bed with sand under my eyelids I feel the pleasure of penetration his arms claim my belly I open my eyes to come for him but he is at sea. gone gone gone III. For 10th grade Biology I nurtured chickens from eggs. Well, to be truthful only some eggs hatched, because others had tears injected which turned the embryos foul sulfur smell black. From this experiment I learned you cannot know an egg's contents until its symmetry is destroyed, and though the shell is vulnerable, the inside is even more delicate. never forever never IV. Mornings Luisa stands at the stove with her breakfast eggs (except when she is sick, or when she was single). In her mother's day there were blood spots, but Luisa has white eggshells, or brown eggshells that always contain yolk and albumen. Her eggs are predictable. No embryonic heart or dead chicks to fear. What keeps her poise perfectly pensive is Alphonse. You can be married to a man for twenty-odd years and still not know when, or if, he will kiss you again at breakfast. When the kitchen smells like eggs, is there any news outside of the paper? gone forever gone ​ V. I salute the first two hours of romance— the moment when you realize hey, he/she is alright and then better than that, we are fine. I salute the second two hours of romance— the moment when you are not sure you are good enough or want to be involved and fear that you are. I salute the third two hours of romance— the moment when comfort cages the fears and you laugh a lot and say we too much. I salute the last two hours of romance— the moment when you realize time is not measured in hours or fractions of centuries, but in the quality of perpetual memories. forever never forever VI. Perpetual? I don't think so. It's not an all the time thing. Passion is moments. Love is visions. What bonds is not a ring, nor a kiss, but a whisper perfectly timed and a look reaffirming I am myself with you I am myself with you we are not strangers. Sometimes these words are trite lies. Sometimes it does not pay to continue staring. Somethings are hard to shake even in the morning. gone forever never VII. I don't want to let go. There, I've said it! Okay? I-don't-want-to. Not that I can't. I should, but I don't want to. Don't make me. I won't. If I was honest, I'd admit the reasons, instead, I trap it inside a shell. I won't choke on the yolk. When we scrambled, it was delicious. gone gone gone VIII. All right. Alright already, I'll say it. When I read your face (my nakedness sheltering yours) I told you that whatever other (love, like, dislike, hate) was between us, you could always have my thighs to hide between. You could always surrender or take prisoners there. forever never gone IX. He told no one what was in his heart or in his life. I took him to his first drive-in movie and his first motel with in-room porn. We wrote/rode words together in diners and tried to out poet each other and battled with words and battled with each other and I found it just as easy to write happy and, and, and... He told no one that when he sleeps he holds tightly to a pillow or body never breaking the embrace, never, never. I gave him everything there was to know and when our bodies met they never shook hands they went right to the core, to the children who found each other frightened and crying. He told no one that he could open up radiant, but he told me with mute fingers he told me love and communion and pain and stigmata and sex and penance. Now, he sits silently in the blue diner with notebooks, figures, and fingers, and all the freedom he wanted. He tells no one that I loved him enough to let him go. Gone, his sweat in my hair Gone, his words on my pillow Gone, his hands on my throat Never, to hold me through sleep Forever, to lie with me in dreams Never, never let go, because I need the eggs.