The old star maps, grainy
black and white, are wrong now.
Looking back, we read
them differently.
Everyone’s indignant
at your loss,
but it doesn’t mean they understand
what was lost.
Now I mustn’t speak of you,
must file your image away in musty
albums, between pages of journals,
in folders I never open.
The picture’s neater anyway
without your great arc,
your weird ellipse,
unaligned, individual.
Round black spot
ringed with white:
soon I’ll come around to believing
that you will never exist.