Scripto inferio*
The aerogramme bears
her name, ghosting beneath his news,
never mentions their storied
youth—long since reduced
to runes, timeless as quills
dipped in lemon juice. How molten,
memory’s wax, in layered bleeds,
a demijohn’s taper alight, in a draft.
There are only moths now, wreathing
an old flame. Thin, blue,
the letter enfolds a single
whisper: O to be greatly desired again.
*recycled parchment’s earlier text faintly reemerging
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 6.
Laurie Klein’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Southern Review, New Letters, Ascent, Terrain, MAR, Potomac Review, and other journals. She has a prize-winning chapbook, Bodies of Water, Bodies of Flesh, and her first collection, Where the Sky Opens, a Partial Cosmography, has been selected for the Poeima Poetry Series.
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