The perpetual homage to jet-lagged leaves
and bougainvillea’s long temptations eventually die.
In youth, you mistake
long kisses of July rain
for something permanent.
Without knowledge of it happening,
years go by, they fade.
Summer months,
minutiae of memory.
And now, the love, for the woman
who compelled living
and not poetry,
is a shelved envelope
of photographs and retrievable negatives
of a late season.