Years go by and all your loves devolve into a composite,
Passing on time’s travelator, gliding to a terminal,
Never to be seen again and you watch from Security,
Frisked as though this stood for sex, this stood for intimate.
Ghosts—and you are ignorant of exorcism rites.
Whenever you’re entangled in some temporary angel
Comes the shadow of another love: a flicker of a dimple
Or the first arrested syllable of laughter soft as promises.
You meet her in Departures after half a decade lost
And it’s no longer her but her extrapolated. Someone
Calls her over—time to make the plane—and flings
A prophylactic glance at you, you melancholy revenant.
Copyright © Patrick Chapman 2007
