While having coffee at the new café,
I sighted her through noontime’s bright window
stepping from the bookshop across the street,
my dead lover. Of course it wasn’t her,
not even her ghost, but another soul
in her coat, turning, chin up, to inhale
the day, as my lover might—slight like her,
as lively as I knew her thirty years
ago. So for a moment I looked back,
everything that had happened to us since
wiped clean—for a moment. Then she was gone
forever. Because where would I find her
who had lost her twice, once when she was still
alive, and then when only I remained?