2KBK by Cara Lorello

He left a note for me
on the cardboard back cover of a notepad
hung by a magnate on the fridge,
all its paper gone from grocery lists,
in thick, black marker script,
his message permanent:

‘My brightest star, my deepest sea.’

A declaration,
said in the spirit of new love
before the ordinary settled in,
and in it did settle, for all of fall
through the end of winter.

I read his words again that spring,
but they moved me less.
By then the message had begun
to mock itself, for he hadn’t talked
of the stars and sea in so long.

Like winter he’d come and gone
early, left no notice.
I watched his slow retreat
unfurl in small waves
while standing in doorways,
in the driver’s seat, from sidewalks
in blistering dark, dropped a tear
here and there in his wake.

Things he wrote to me I kept,
this one included, for a while after;
a gesture of admission I believed
their words once, whether
he meant them or not,
words like ‘my brightest star, my deepest sea,’
and all of their one-time possibility

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about the author:

Cara Lorello lives in the Inland Northwest. Following a brief stint as a news journalist, Lorello freelances writing and publishes poetry in her native Spokane.
Her work has appeared in The Sun, SlushPile Magazine, The Smoking Poet, Riverlit, Wulfstan’s Literary Tumble, Spokane-Coeur d’Alene Woman and Northwest Woman magazine, and the spokane poetry anthology, Railtown Almanac.