Connemara Wadsworth: “Twenty Years After”
TWENTY YEARS AFTER
No longer will I keep the parchment
so long rolled for safe-keeping
not easily uncurled now as if not meant
to open again. The match’s flame
first licks an edge, then catches hold.
No regret as I watch the smoke
lift away, mirroring the marriage
that stopped holding the two of us.
Gone the calligraphy of intentions,
the syntax of commitment.
The flame flickers, burns itself out
the ash that speaks of that day
falters, falls through the grate
to be cast off into life’s detritus.
Connemara Wadsworth’s chapbook, The Possibility of Scorpions, won the White Eagle Coffee Store Press 2009 Chapbook Contest. Her poems have appeared in magazines such as Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Comstock Review, Connecticut River Review, Ibbetson Street, Northern New England Review, Off the Coast, Poetlore, and others.