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Photography by Lakyn Barton

The closest thing to our shape
is the shadow like impression the summer sidewalk scorched together.
The only warmth I feel from your body,
the lambent lights from seedy bars you said that we should someday enter,

But never did.

Now all I have is the impressions of your pen;
The shape of your writing, your only shape I have left.

And I’m compelled to make a palimpsest,
But it’d just be another impression of you
that I could never forget.

I could write the words “I love you,”
But all they’d ever do is give you stipulation
to put doubt between us two.

And you could easily erase those words that yearn
to put me in your Canon-

But who are we kidding?

If anything at all,
I am just another woman’s underwriting.