I did not keep your Letters

{Gabriel Gadfly

I read them,
 and then I threw them in the trash,
 but make no mistake, I read them.

I swallowed them whole.
 I filled my eyes with every word,
 I sewed them in patterns
 into my flesh of my body,
 at night I wake to entertain the ghosts
 lounging in my bedroom
 with impromptu recitations
 of your letters, of your thoughts,
 of the shape of you in words

but I could not keep your letters.

I could not let them languish
 in a dusty box, fermenting
 into poisons in the closet dark.
 I could not let them lie in wait,
 like coiled paper vipers
 ready to strike the hand that strays
 too far and stirs the den.}