| Imagine the Bowler stamped: rim narrowed into an elegiac caress for the fallen, broken, crown... Once, at a Halloween costumed gala, I reared it full and proud, even as I limped Charlie Chaplin about a floor made for dance tittering my balance upon my lover instead of a cane or sobriety months and months passed in sexualized blindness in which we silently rhymed love with forever emboldened (or perhaps in naivety) we replaced the word life with joy in all the modern books we shared but then I confessed that though I did not believe in marriage I wanted to marry her |
as you know, there is no salvation from honesty, so I sat silently as she packed her things until only her body was left to crush the meaning of every object that remained as she walked out she accidentally stepped on the Bowler hat that I had worn once so long ago "Sorry" she said and vanished leaving her last word to drop and nestle into that damn hat instead of my heart |