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Love Letters Lost

by John Stocks


The old love letters locked,
Stranded in a steel box.
In their quiet stillness,
Perfect sublimation.
Deep within the polished bureau,
The narrative still burns.

Was it only yesterday we passed into the darkness?
Still in the pomp of our ascendancy,
Trapped, still pulsing with passion,
Racing with the vibrancy, your first love,
Pumping like blood, fired with urgency,
Through the narrow veins of papyrus,
Your words embedded in the fibrous weave,
As if still carved in some ancient oak?

Why now this dank immortality,
Where hearts and kisses moisten,
The page fades to sallow?
In time the stench of the grave will pervade,
Will creep over the words that gave you soul,
That stretched your thoughts to heaven.
Such is your betrayal.

Old letters, like old dogs,
Deserve a second spring.


Copyright © 2011 by John Stocks

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