I thought all the missing was over
until they moved out your desk at work

and an old photo I’d taken
but didn’t know you’d kept

had fallen on the floor
the one of you and that smitten benefactor

with his arm snaked around your shoulders
in the middle of all the seemly ladies

lined up against a black limo
as long as wishful thinking

leaving you with a help me smile
and one foot off the ground

as if you would have soared
out of the frame

and into the air above me
if only there had been

a time and place to fall
In a good old fashioned way

we broke each other’s hearts
What we didn’t give we gave with style

—First published in Spectrum 2: The Gift (Spectrum Publishing, December 2015), an anthology edited and produced by Don Kingfisher Campbell; republished here by author’s permission

Bio: Jack Cooper