I left a watchman at Place de St. Michel
to guard the beautiful boy I was,
the one with long blond hair
who played and sang his heart out to a crowd.
Along the way I wrote postcards to myself.
On one,
“There is a crow between us.”
On another,
“poppies
blooming in a field of wheat.”
Sometimes,
just a lovely word, or two,
lilac and wisteria.
More words could ruin everything.
They all came back, one by one
like people queuing up to nod beside a burial
for someone we hardly knew.
Would you mind, terribly, if I wear my wedding ring?
I mean my former one?
Not yours, I mean, the one that has a diamond?
Why not?
It has the brilliance of a star, and both the diamond and the star
are light years from the boy I used to be.
What are you writing?! What?!
A rat in Châtelet is more beautiful than my life.
Marlon L. Fick is the author of six books (of poetry, short fiction, translation, and novels). He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts from three countries (The United States, Mexico, and Spain). Currently, he resides in Arizona where he is the Chair of Creative Writing at Navajo Technical University.