It took him years to feel the loss
precisely enough to put behind him.
By then, he was involved with the next
woman he would lose to his rivalry
with his past, forever presenting
itself as though it had no future.

He walked for miles, only to find it
exactly where he threw it down.
And there he broke it to appease
the ghosts of two much younger lovers—
one dead inside him, and one interred
inside a happy woman far away.