Poem #9

First I lost you, then I lost you.
Then I lost you, you and you.

While I was losing you, I also lost you.
For a while I had you, then I lost you again.

It was cold the day I got the news I'd lost you.
Not you!? But I had. I had lost you.

I think a lot about losing you, in particular.
Your loss is a big, echoing ache.

Not like smaller losses that are more like
Not getting a magazine anymore.

That's what it was like to lose you. No, worse.
But not nearly as bad as to lose you.

Then -- you? Please, please not you.
But it wasn't. Thank god, I hadn't lost you.

A landscape like the moon.
All the same. "Don't leave." Someone left too soon.