In the courtyard, I see new
Faces. My summer friends left
Me or my good health left
Them, there’s no way to know.
I wonder, what will fill
The vacuum our dispersed
Love creates as holes
Open in the universe
We had in common?
I still can’t let Susie go,
My “practice girlfriend.”
Did we really ply light-
Sabers at the Bowl
& swear loyalty that night
Hanging our legs off
The bridge near my house?
No matter how rough
They’d be to keep, our vows
Were sacred ground &
Our desperation owned.
She gave me her hand.
The first tenderness I’d known,
Though a summer love,
Is hard as ice to let go of.