I stood on our familiar bridge,
arriving early to rehearse
the things I had to say.
Beneath, the river roared your anger
drowning my thoughts
and on its branch a squirrel stopped
to stare at this strange static form:
neither a hunter nor a tree.

You did not come:
Your absence swept
three years of reminiscence
from that bridge, into the water
to be washed away.

I once loved that place
but I have not gone back.
All I keep of it
is the lack of you
and a squirrel’s curiosity,
fortuitously stamped
upon the final frame
of someone else’s story.