picture from poetess' personal scrapbook
Poem written for and submitted “Love or Bust” poetry contest, Karen Jones, sponsor, January 28, 2026.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ At dawn, your fingers still trace the curve of my spine like they're reading braille~ each scar, each shift in the landscape, a sentence you know by heart. You laugh when I steal the blanket, when my knees find the hollows behind yours, an old map drawn without compass or reason. Our fights are old books now, their spines cracked open to the same dog-eared pages~ we know the lines by heart, but recite them softer these days. We are two trees grown into each other’s bark, gnarled and weathered-together, no longer remembering which rings belong to whom. Some loves are built like this~ not with grand gestures, but with the quiet tyranny of your coffee cup left warming on my nightstand, the way you hum off-key in the shower, still, after all these years, and I pretend not to hear it, and you pretend not to know. Forty-three autumns, and your hands smell like sawdust and onions, and I wouldn’t trade our slow unraveling for anything~ not even the taut, bright thread we once were.
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