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Slather


by Jennifer Donnell


Your soap on the shelf in the shower
melts with my every hair wash
-fleeting, manly, fragrant-
and I'll miss it the way I should have missed you.

Every day less to lather myself.

You explained last week
that you don't care anymore.

She's twenty four, has my name
and she's coming to visit
and you'll love her forever,
even if that was how long
I was supposed to love you.

We'll spend the next decade forgetting our last two,
how each night when the day drew your frown into a straight line
of tired indifference,
I would flit about you in an a-line skirt and flirty top,
rest my head in your lap as you stroked my back.

We always made time for that
and would laugh off the struggles.

We always came home.


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